








LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 

Chap. Copyright 

PZ3 

Shelf. „ 

4h 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 

























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“ MANDERS BEGAN SINGING 


(See page 231 ) 




MANDERS 


& Me of Parts 


BY 

ELWYN BARRON 


Jilustratrti ftg 
T. SPICER SIMSON 



BOSTON 

L. C. PAGE AND COMPANY 
(incorporated) 

1899 



Pzs 


\ 


40169 

Copyright , 

By L. C. Page and Company 

(incorporated) 


/ "W* O V 1 ^ V* :•* 


4 i AUt A * *^ fv 
& . 


Colonial press: 

Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co. 
Boston, U. S. A. 


ST) O 

CXx^-a t *- ^ ^ « 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

CHAPTER I 1 

CHAPTER II 19 

CHAPTER III 35 

CHAPTER IV 57 

CHAPTER V 70 

CHAPTER VI 86 

CHAPTER VII 101 

CHAPTER VIII 108 

CHAPTER IX 119 

CHAPTER X 132 

CHAPTER XI 141 

CHAPTER XII 154 

CHAPTER XIII 168 

CHAPTER XIV 


183 


VI 11 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 


CHAPTER XY . 


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• 

199 

CHAPTER XYI . 


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• 

• 

• 

208 

CHAPTER XVII . 


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• 

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224 

CHAPTER XVIII 


• 

• 

• 

• 

237 

CHAPTER XIX . 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

247 

CHAPTER XX . 

• 



• 

. 

262 

CHAPTER XXI . 

• 


• 

• 

. 

275 

CHAPTER XXII 1 


• 

• 

• 

• 

295 

CHAPTER XXIII 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

313 

CHAPTER XXIV 

• 

• 

• 


• 

323 





MANDERS 


CHAPTER I 

When Manders began life he was eight years old. 
This statement does not warrant the inference that 
he had put off being born until he was ready for 
string-top and jack-knife. Manders conformed to 
the conventionalities at birth, and devoted the usual 
time to clamorous and practical opposition to those 
demands of life and infantage which seem to strike 
incipient men and women as so many absurd devices 
for their discomfort and annoyance. 

Doubtless, were it left to the choice of the average 
boy, there would be a prompt reformation of natal 
conditions, and man would be born of woman as 
Minerva sprang from Jove, fully equipped for the 
moral and physical arena, where his energies are to 
be tried and defied. The human economy, indeed, 
already demands of science some such improvement 
upon the principal methods of the race in the matter 
of its self-multiplication. Some savants hold the 
opinion that the full fruits of civilisation are not 
A 


MANDERS 


likely to be gathered into the store-house of per- 
fection until it has been uniformly and successively 
demonstrated that full growth and mental com- 
pleteness at birth are really the natural ordering. 
In support of this intelligent theory they have the 
most incontestable authority, the Scriptural exposi- 
tion of Man’s origin and establishment on the earth. 
Adam began the active work of husbandman within 
twelve hours after he had become a sentient being. 
His botanical, zoological and other information was 
plenary from the beginning. He was able at once 
to separate, classify and specifically name the animal, 
vegetable and mineral life with which his extensive 
estates were abundantly stocked and enriched. 

Were it not that the confusion of biographies is 
something to be avoided, some confirmatory facts from 
modern experimentation might be offered here. There 
are the well-known but generally disregarded con- 
ditions of Standish Woolverton’s attested birth and 
career. These circumstances afford the most conclu- 
sive proof that our ancient belief, that infancy and 
youth must precede manhood and maturity, is as 
much the outcome of ignorance and superstition as 
the one-time faith in centaurs and griffins, or the 
modern notions of heredity. Dr Spenlow’s trust- 
worthy history of “Physical Abnormities” includes 
all that is of physiological or psychological value in 
this peculiar case. Dr Spenlow, who was himself the 
attending physician, says Woolverton was five feet 
tall, and had a full beard thirty minutes after his 
2 


MANDERS 


birth. In the morning of the next day he rode to 
hounds at the invitation of Lord Pondlewaite- 
Etherton. It was only two years later that he wrote 
the famous brochure on “ Protoplasmic Detritus,” 
which Professor Huxley confessed nullified all his 
own laboriously elaborated theories of life and nature. 
We all know how Woolverton fell a victim in 1873 
to the demonstration of his theory that a raindrop 
falling through a vacuum of a thousand feet would 
acquire the fatal force of a bullet discharged from a 
gun. He was eight years old at the time — just the 
age at which Manders began life, but in that coin- 
cidence lies all the resemblance between the two 
histories. 

Manders, I repeat, was born in the old, illogical, 
ridiculous and infantile way ; so the declaration 
relative to the age at which he began life must be 
understood to mean the time when he found himself 
dependent upon his own unaided exertions as a bread- 
winner. Manders had had some parents of a careless, 
irresponsible pattern, and such ideas as they had 
inculcated in his prattlehood would hardly serve any 
but the most energetic of resolute minds as baits 
to a success of any appreciable kind. 

The paternal Manders had gone through with 
a gentlemanly fortune in an ungentlemanlike way, 
the final sovereigns of it having disappeared before 
the real Manders, my Manders, was well rid of his 
swaddling bands. Having nothing more to spend, 
and wanting the aptitude to acquire the means of 
3 


MANDERS 


continuing an easy existence, Manders pbre, thoroughly 
ennuied of an empty life, one star-blazed evening 
in the waning of summer, wrote a letter or two, 
strolled down to the Quai de Malaquais, threw the 
butt of his cigarette into the river and dived after it. 
When Madame Manders heard of this exceptional 
exercise of determination on her husband’s part, her 
pretty face lost its colour, she wept in an irresolute, 
repining sort of way, and, not quite certain of her- 
self, gathered Manders into her lap and kissed him. 

“ Tu n’as pas’ un fader-r, mon pauvre ; mon petit 
poor Edouard ! ” 

She said this a great many times, sitting there 
swaying back and forth, as unresourceful as her 
child. There were about her the faded and worn 
remainders of a once artistic room — for Manders pere 
had had taste of a kind, although he did scandalise 
and estrange his English family by really marrying 
a Quartier Latin grisette , suspected of posing for 
artists who were unable to paint draperies and 
despised landscapes. There are no tyrants like 
our artificial sensibilities. 

Madame Manders never saw the something that 
had been her husband, which they got back from 
the care - soothing, shame - quenching, emotionless 
friend of humanity, the serpentine river, murmurous 
as the 6ooing of doves, as it rolls down to the sea. 

“ I cannot look upon him that way,” she whimpered, 
dropping tears upon the cheek of the wonder-stricken 
Manders. “ He would come that way into my dreams. 

4 


MANDERS 


They say dead people stare at you so. I should die 
of terror.” She shivered, and the child patted her 
throat, which was smooth and round and ivory tinted. 
It was a caress she liked. She always kissed him for 
it. She did now, and just the herald of a smile 
touched her tear- wet lips. 

“Don’t cry,” said Manders; “if my papa is dead, 
we are going to have a ride in a carriage.” 

Two men came over from London in personal 
response to one of the letters written by Manders 
pere. They took the long box back with them. 
Madame Manders went down to the Gare St Lazare. 
She had an instinctive clinging to the something in 
the long box. She would rather it were not taken 
away into that gloomy England. But, then, she did 
not know. The men were his brothers, they told 
her. Perhaps they had the better right to him ; only 
it seemed to her that the box had in it the best days 
and nights of her girlhood; some memories, some 
hopes, some loves that belonged only to her. As 
she stood there in an absent way fingering one of the 
wreaths of flowers, a thought of some vague talk 
she had had with Manders pere about the future of 
their child came into her uncertain mind. For the 
moment maternity spoke within her. Not very 
distinctly, not with any authority, but like the echo 
of a once dear voice, imperfectly recalled with still 
a note of sweetness in it. She pushed the child 
hesitatingly forward a step or two. There was the 
faint shadow of an anxious hope in her face — the 
5 


MANDERS 


hope that is already a disappointment. She spoke 
in English. It seemed more respectful to the still 
friend there in the long box, that friend whose 
French always made her laugh — except, except when 
it made her sigh. The smooth-faced, but older 
brother was nearer to her — the one with something 
so stern, so forbidding in his eyes. 

“ Monsieur, this is his boy ! His name is Edward, 
too!” 

The brother looked coldly at her, without so 
much as glancing at the child. 

“ It is your child, madame.” 

“And his,” pointing a trembling finger toward the 
box. 

“ We do not know that, madame.” 

She shrank away. She was not hurt. Her heart 
felt no resentment. She only understood that she 
and her boy had nothing in common with these grim 
men. She had never dreamed of money for herself ; 
besides, she had known well enough that the Edward 
she had loved in an undeveloped way w$s the heir 
to nothing — lord of not a sou more than the money 
he had squandered in his idle fashion as they drifted 
from city to city until, in the year the Republic 
triumphed, the birth of the little one arrested them 
in Paris. But she had some dim, half-fearful, half- 
alluring notion of an English adoption for him, of 
an English education at the hands of those formid- 
able rich relatives of whom Manders pere had 

babbled over his boy’s cradle in those hours of 

6 


MANDERS 


half repentance, when he caught serious glimpses 
of his disordered life. She would like to have had 
her boy a gentleman ; but, as it was not to be — eh 
bien ; so much the better, perhaps. 

The train began crawling out of the station. 
Madame Manders looked after it with a dumb long- 
ing that was succeeded by a dull sense of desolation 
as the last carriage quite disappeared from her view. 
She stood in the same attitude some moments, her 
eyes, not even misty now, staring ahead as if she 
still saw something that was strangely beyond her 
comprehension, and which held her gaze without 
occupying her thought. The child pulled at her 
gown. 

“ Mamma ! ” 

“ Oui, mon petit,” she answered unconsciously, her 
eyes still on that distant, baffling vision. 

“ Allons, chez papa,” said the child insistently. 

“ Oui, allons done, mon pauvre.” She turned un- 
emotionally as he tugged at her hand, and they went 
out of the station, she walking through a dream. 

Paris is a forgetful city. It knows only the 
present hour, and the passing event. It laughs or 
sobs, or shrieks, or roars in turn, under the breath of 
the moment, indifferent utterly to the thing it was 
doing the moment before. That is why everything 
is improbable, and nothing impossible in the future 
of France. Madame Manders, walking with her 
fatherless boy towards the ’bus stand, was partly 
aware of this unmindfulness. An hour before, when 
7 


MANDERS 


the hearse, and the two mourning carriages passed 
along the streets, all eyes were turned upon it. 
Madame Manders had felt a sort of personal pride 
in her grief, as she saw hats lifted reverently while 
that velvet-covered, flower-decked long box, with its 
careless sleeper, went past. She had noted gratefully 
the thousand pitying looks directed towards her and 
the child by her side. Her bereavement was not 
without its distinction. Now no one heeded her, 
unless it was to peer into her face with that curious 
scrutiny which betrays an insolent admiration. This 
indifference to her affliction, this calm reduction of 
widowhood and orphanage to the commonplace, 
making them mere threads in the warp and woof 
of experience, grievously affected Madame Manders. 
All sympathy seemed suddenly withdrawn from her 
She felt alone, abandoned. As she took her place in 
the ’bus she had a sense of fearing people which her 
common sense chided ; but she sank into a corner and 
lifted her boy on to her lap, as if he should serve her 
as a shield. Then she felt an inclination to laugh, 
and drew the unbecoming black veil more closely 
about her face. But tears came instead of the laugh, 
so versatile is the human heart. 

Manders was unconcerned. Nearly six years of 
age was Manders now, but he still knew very well 
the gross folly of being much disturbed by such irra- 
tional things as death and the hodge-podge of mortal 
uneducation. The pity of it is that children, in spite 
of their instinctive rebellion, come in their turn, 
8 


MANDERS 


through enforced imitation and study of their elders, 
to be uneducated, too, exchanging the wisdom of the 
eternities for the fantastic knowledge of a ludicrous 
ephemeral existence. Perhaps, if we were not at 
such pains to uneducate our children, cramming them 
into uniform mind factories, and applauding their 
progress in the obliteration of individualism, we 
might come, in time, to know a little of God’s pur- 
pose in creating the world in which we antic. We 
never stop to consider how wonderful is the wisdom 
of a new-born babe uttering a vigorous protest 
against the cheat of mortality. 

Manders, cuddled on his mother’s lap, cast a look 
around, saw that, with the exception of himself, the 
’bus was filled with self-created, self- deluded im- 
beciles, and so tucked his head down comfortably 
under the maternal arm and went to sleep. The 
rattle and roar of the heavy wheels grinding over 
the granite pavements could not reach into the 
region where his soul refreshed itself. 

Once again, that evening, as he had on the four 
preceding evenings, Manders asked. 

“ Where is my papa ? ” 

And Madame Manders answered as she had before 
answered, only this time without tears. 

“He has gone for a long visit, my little one. 
Sometime we shall go to him. He will never come 
back to us.” 

Manders never asked the question again. Philo- 
sophy restrained him, no doubt ; possibly it was only 
9 


MANDERS 


tlie force of circumstances ; for Madame Manders had 
the chance to sublet her roomy apartment in the Rue 
d’Assas, and straightway took a snug little triolet of 
rooms five dingy flights up in the dirty and crooked, 
if picturesque, Rue St Jacques, the oldest street in 
Paris, and comfortless, but adapted to the practice 
of economy. New associations begetting new ideas, 
Manders seemed to forget that he had ever had 
the responsibility of a father. 

The English brothers had given Madame Manders 
a purse on the day of the going away, after she had 
signed some little paper the exact purport of which 
she did not attempt to grasp. The purse contained 
one thousand francs, and that sum made her 
tranquilly indifferent to the contents of the paper; 
but, had he been carefully consulted, Manders might 
reasonably have interposed an objection to so cheap 
a relinquishment of what really constituted his title 
of gentility, a claim on the Manders’ family. At the 
same time one thousand francs immediately in hand 
are rather to be thought of than things remote 
and hardly contingent. With this money Madame 
Manders felt secure to indulge the mournful sweets 
of new widowhood without troubling her pretty 
little head with the problems of destiny indefinitely 
put off. The day after the funeral one of these 
problems offered to obtrude itself. 

“Will you go back to posing?” garrulous old 
Mere Pugens had asked her. Mother Pugens had 
a little “ tabac ” and paper shop, and was sage- femme 
io 


MANDERS 

as well. It was she who had ushered Manders into 
the world. 

“ How should one know what one is to do ? ” she 
answered, adding somewhat irrelevantly, maybe, “I 
hadn’t had a baby then.” 

“ Ah ! ” said Mere Pugens, glancing about the room 
indifferently. “Ah! my dear, once a model always 
a model — or worse, is what they say. You are 
young and pretty— you have to do something, I 
suppose. Well, there are only three things for one 
like you who can’t so much as make a chemise; 
posing, re-marriage, or — well, you know what my 
girl Lisette has done for herself. But then Lisette 
was clever. Lord ! lord ! Lisette saw where the 
future hid its berries before she had quit wearing 
short stockings. She used to say, with a toss of her 
head in contempt of the shop, ‘ I’ll be a marquise one 
day ! ’ Eh bien ! It is amusing. He isn’t a 
marquis — no; but she rides in her carriage just 
the same. I saw her in the Bois last Sunday. She 
threw me a kiss, my dear. A good girl is Lisette, 
but no longer a child. She’s forty, my dear — but 
she has had twenty years of it, and without having 
gone begging twice in the time. An estimable 
record, eh ? And never ashamed of her old mother. 
That is the best of it. Now if you have a mind to 
consult Lisette — ” 

“Not at all, Mere Pugens,” Madame Manders 
hastened to interrupt. 

“ As for that matter,” said the old woman with a 


MANDERS 


curious smile that pursed her hairy lips, “I don’t 
know that you need look as if I had spat in the 
holy water. Is it any worse than being a 
model? Lisette was a model for a while; she says 
it’s a dog’s life — the hardest work there is, and far 
from respectable. It is better to be a lady, my dear. 
And think what you could do for the boy. You 
can’t do much for him now, I think; and as for 
the pay a model gets — bah! You’d much better 
roast chestnuts.” 

But one evening, three months after Manders had 
ceased to ask for his papa, Madame Manders was 
accosted by an old artist just as she turned into the 
Rue Sufflot on her way home. 

“ Is it you, Marie ? ” 

“Yes, M. Monier, it is I.” 

Both were well pleased with the meeting, and 
they shook hands like old comrades, smiling frankly. 

They could afford to be frank. When a woman 
is less than twenty-five and a man is more than 
sixty such a thing as candid friendship is possible 
between them. 

M. Monier fondled the hand he held in both his 
own in an affectionately paternal way. “ It has 
been so long since I saw you last I was not quite 
sure. You have changed — but not much. A little 
rounder than you were, Marie. Just a suspicion. 
Possibly an improvement, eh? But you are in 
mourning ! ” 

“My husband, monsieur.” 

12 


MANDERS 


“Oh, yes; 1 remember. You left us to get 
married. So it is over ? Humph ! Are you sorry ? ” 

“ Oh, yes, M. Monier. He was good to me — nearly 
always. Sometimes we saw things in two ways; 
but he used to kiss me afterwards.” It was as if 
she were addressing her father, attempting to clear 
his vision of a prejudicial mist. M. Monier quite 
understood. He gave her hand a final stroke as he 
let it slip from his clasp. 

“ And when did he die ? ” 

“Three months ago. You know they found him 
in the river.” 

He knew nothing whatever of this. He looked 
into her eyes. He had forgotten that they were 
blue, that delicate blue which is perplexingly akin 
to grey, but he remembered them honest and child- 
like. He saw that same direct simplicity in them 
now, and he pulled at the grizzled tufts of his beard 
to hide a smile. He was amused by her unmind- 
fulness that “ found in the river ” is not descriptive 
of an orthodox solution of the large problem. 

“ Then you are alone ? ” 

“Oh, no, monsieur, I have my little one.” There 
was no mistaking that sudden lighting up of her 
face, and he was touched by it. 

“ And you live ? ” 

“ For the present, monsieur.” 

“ And after a while ? ” 

“I don’t know, monsieur. Something will come. 
I do not trouble myself.” Madame Manders had a 

13 


MANDERS 


dimple in her chin and a mouth like a Cupid’s bow. 
What have these things to do with troubling or 
being troubled ? 

M. Monier shook his head. 

“ Then you don’t care to come back to me now ? ” 

“ I don’t know, monsieur. Why not ? ” 

“ There are not many models like you, Marie. My 
school needs you. Come, let us make a bargain.” 

“ As you please, monsieur.” 

“ Good. When can you come ? ” 

“ To-morrow ? ” 

“Why not to-night? I have an evening class — 
charcoal idiots who can’t draw with a brush.” He 
flourished his hand eloquently. 

“ You are so droll, M. Monier. But I cannot leave 
my little one at night. He can be with a neighbour 
part of the day — I pay her ten sous — but she wouldn’t 
keep him at night. Besides, I like to have him then 
myself. He is pretty, monsieur.” 

“ I have no doubt of it. I see where he gets it.” 
He chucked the dimpled chin, and the eyes above it 
laughed. “ To-morrow, then ? ” 

“ Yes, monsieur.” 

“At nine?” 

“ At nine, monsieur.” 

There was much that was agreeable to Madame 
Manders in the idea of reviving a professional rela- 
tionship in which she formerly prided herself. She 
had heard it said that hers was the best figure in the 
Latin Quarter, and she had never thought herself 
14 


MANDERS 


called upon to disclaim the fact. It did not disturb 
her a great deal that some of the more exacting 
students had declared her head and body to be of 
no kinship, the one having been designed for a doll 
at the Bon Marche, the other having been fashioned 
after the Eurydice of Nanteuil. She had taken it 
upon herself to examine this admirable treasure of 
the Luxembourg, a figure in which the roundness 
of maturity and the seductive charm of youth were 
wonderfully balanced. Therefore the criticism con- 
veyed only a compliment to her by no means logical 
little mind, for she knew very well the advantage of 
being a young Venus in an art quarter where good 
heads are in a great majority over shapely bodies. 
This reflection made it possible for her to reply to 
her critics with amiability, “ If my head offends you, 
you should never look above my bust/’ 

But quite as persuasive as the whisperings of a 
gentle vanity was an inexplicable yearning to escape 
the portentous dignity of her role as Madame Manders. 
Her husband had been precise and formal in this 
particular. In the presence of others he always 
addressed her, referred to her, as Madame Manders, 
and the indulgent world took up the cue, so that 
every fibre of the poor creature’s body stiffened into 
a responsive dignity that kept her on the rack. It 
never occurred to her to interpose an objection, but 
she so hungered for the old familiar name and the 
frank, Bohemian life under the reign of the ateliers 
that it is probable the prospect of being called Marie 

15 


MANDERS 


by the students had as much to do with her ready 
agreement with M. Monier as the desire to hear 
praises of her charms. This naive trait of a simple 
temperament may be accounted for in the fact that 
Madame Manders was, notwithstanding the opinion 
of the insular family Manders, a woman of so genuine 
a virtue that marriage and maternity had not pro- 
faned the maidenliness of her character. The idea 
here so imperfectly defined was comprehensively ex- 
pressed by Pointin the first time he saw her posed 
for Roder’s Eve. After eyeing her in pleasurable 
silence for some moments, he said, in a half serious 
way, “ You should make a faithful likeness and call 
it 'Aphrodite Exempt de PechdM” A very charm- 
ing compliment if you will analyse it ; certainly an 
extraordinary tribute to a professional model for the 
nude — in the Quartier Latin. 

When she stepped out of her apartment to go to 
the studio on the morning after her agreement with 
M. Monier, Marie left Madame Manders behind, and 
tripped into the street as coquettish a model as any 
that ever danced her heart and reputation away at 
a Bullier ball. She felt deliciously animating thrills 
in the thought of her return to a productive inde- 
pendence. She was pleased with the expectation 
of her welome at the school, an expectation more 
than realised, for everybody was enthusiastic. It was 
a day of agreeable sensations, and the evening retro- 
spect was a triumphant renewal of the day’s experi- 
ences. She had lifted Manders to her shoulders and 
16 


MANDERS 


mounted the stairs with him in a gale of merriment, 
on her return from the studio. 

“ Houp-la ! ” 

Manders was very well content. Marie had 
revived. She had put off her mourning garments 
in obedience to professional demands, and in some 
indefinable way the mourning had gone out of her 
heart at the same time. It must not be supposed 
that Marie had not loved her husband. She loved 
him very much in her way, and as long as his fine 
person and indolent affection had their direct influence 
upon her. But Marie had never been fully awakened, 
and she was as incapable of a self-sustained emotion 
as little Manders himself, and the dead Edward was 
as far away from her as from the child, and for 
precisely the same reason. After all, we too often 
mistake a constitutional dolorousness for elegiac 
fidelity, and confound with levity and insincerity the 
amiability and graciousness which attest a good heart 
and a generous soul. Prolonged grief argues a dis- 
turbed conscience. Marie’s conscience was as clear 
and untroubled as the water in the great basin of the 
Luxembourg gardens under the blue of a still June 
morning before the children have come down with 
their boats. Being thus tranquil of soul, she could 
be no other than light of heart. She was soon done 
with weeping ; “ the maman who smiles,” as Manders 
named her, came again, and she and her boy were 
children together, the toys of the one being the 

amusement of the other. One looking in upon the 
B 


MANDERS 


cosy, well-ordered, really pretty little room which 
Marie called salon, and seeing the two innocents at 
play upon the floor in the candle-light, might have 
been tempted to think that Manders pere did rather 
a good thing when he threw that cigarette butt into 
the Seine. 

Of course, Marie had liked the champagne suppers 
and the curious assemblies in which strangely assorted 
reputations, male and female, showed their native 
hues through the tobacco smoke, and where jests 
were laughed at less for their wit than for another 
sort of pointedness. But then, too, she had liked 
before that the beer which sans gene students had 
paid for in the dim cafes; she smoked their bad 
cigarettes with a sense of exquisite indulgence, and 
she listened to their droll stories in an abandonment 
of easy mirth. The fact is, Marie was one of those 
truants from Arcadia who live in the passing hour, 
and who have little to do with hopes, and nothing 
whatever to do with repinings. Child of the moment, 
she honoured her paternity. Earth makes flowers — 
roses and lilies, violets and daisies, all the fragrant 
and delicate blossoms and blooms that rejoice the 
desolate world — out of the smiling women who fall 
asleep in her arms. I wonder what Marie will be ? 
Some gossamer-petalled orchid, no doubt, whose 
very spots shall perfect its scheme of beauty and 
refine its purity. 


1 8 


CHAPTER II 


In M. Monier ’s day class, for which Marie posed, was 
a young Virginian whose success in figure drawing 
was in inverse ratio to the intensity of his 
application. He could do very well with a pencil, 
but his colour was invariably as flat as the canvas. 
M. Monier had a fine contempt for what he styled 
“ charcoal draughtsmen.” He would say to his pupils, 
“ If you can’t learn to draw as you paint, you are in 
the wrong school. You may do very well as an 
architect ; you will be of no earthly good as an 
artist.” Those who persisted in the belief that it 
is necessary to learn to draw with a pencil, were 
compelled to choose between the night class and 
some other school. “I won’t teach mechanics by 
sunlight,” growled the old artist doggedly. As it 
was esteemed an advantage to belong to the Monier 
school, which was limited in numbers, and had the 
constant care of its honoured founder, the even- 
ing class was full despite the opprobrium attached 
to it. Walter Blakemore, perhaps induced by that 
spirit of chivalry which makes a Virginian think 
that he must choose the more trying of any two 


MANDERS 


courses, elected to stay with the day class, despite 
frequent admonitions from his derisive fellow students 
“ to go and join the charcoal burners.” His inability 
to master the tones and shades that simulated the 
hills and valleys and plateaus of the microcosm had 
become a class legend. When one student borrowed 
a trifle of another, the bond offered was some such 
jest as, “I’ll repay you when Blakemore learns to 
draw,” a phrase that came to stand for any indefinite 
duration of time. Blakemore at first had the indis- 
cretion to resent these mockeries of his talent, and 
made frequent and rash offers to “ clean out the class,” 
offers at which his fellows railed exasperatingly, 
declaring that the only fearful thing about him was 
his brush. But one morning when the badgering 
was more than commonly persistent Blakemore had 
withstood it with a composure that was most dis- 
concerting to the others. “ I’ll beat you fellows yet,” 
he said with so much calmness that it sounded very 
like the declaration of one quite able to carry 
determination into effect. There was a roar of 
mockery to be sure, but M. Monier, who entered in 
time to hear the prophetic menace, exclaimed heartily, 
“ It wouldn’t surprise me in the least, my boy. The 
spirit is everything. Application, resolution, courage, 
patience — that is all there is to genius — you’ll find 
genius in those words if you look for it, and you 
cannot get hold of the real article without them. 
Well, young gentlemen,” he said with a sudden 
change of manner, and rubbing his hands together 


MANDERS 


in a sort of self felicitation, “ I’ve some pretty news 
for you. We are not to have Antony this morning. 
“No, you shall have a new model if you will, and 
Antony may go to the night class, eh ? ” 

There were some murmurs. Antony was a shaggy 
ruffian who might have been one of the mountain 
bandits of his native Italy before this reverend 
whiteness got into his hair and beard; several of 
the students were eager to try their hand at his 
strong features and rugged torso. 

“ Very well,” said Monier, “you shall choose.” He 
made a sign to the massier and Marie was ushered in. 

“ If you please, M’am’selle,” bowing, and pointing to 
the curtain behind which Marie retired. M. Monier 
seemed very well satisfied with himself. He moved 
about humming unrelated fragments of operas, saying 
now and then to one or another of the grumblers, 
“You shall choose! Antony, if you will !” with the 
manner of being quite convinced that there could be 
no choice in the matter. 

Presently Marie emerged from the curtained corner. 
With the utmost gravity M. Monier, suppressing 
every external sign of exultation for what he read in 
the students’ faces, conducted Marie to the shade. 
“Gentlemen, this is Roder’s Eve, will you take 
that pose, M’am’selle ? ” 

Marie, smiling a little proudly, assumed the desired 
attitude. 

“You recognise it, gentlemen?” M. Monier spoke 
with an assumption of indifference that perhaps 
21 


MANDERS 


deceived no one but himself, for the hum of admira- 
tion and the exclamations of artistic appreciation 
left him no doubt that Antony would become the 
prey of the charcoal burners. 

It was in this way that Marie resumed herself, 
and felt again the flow of nature through her veins. 
There was a rebound of vitality. No longer feeling 
herself under constraints of a semi-conventional life, 
she imagined herself restored to the impulsive girl- 
hood from which marriage had too unwisely snatched 
her. Forms and conditions and a reason for things 
were swept away from the province of her being, 
and she was no more to be held to account than 
were the sparrows which fed on her window ledge, 
when she broke crumbs to them to please Manders. 
And Marie grew younger, and prettier, and gayer 
under a happiness that she took in as unconsciously 
as she breathed the air. She radiated so much cheer 
that all the class partook of it, and the painting 
lessons became labours of love, even Blakemore 
coming under the influence of the enthusiasm 
sufficiently to establish a respectable relation be- 
tween the thing aimed at and the thing performed. 

Marie came to feel a sympathy with the young 
student who seemed to her bent upon achieving 
success in a pursuit for which he had the least 
aptitude. He was but little more than her own age, 
and she thought him an exceptionally good example 
of his sex, — tall, broad-shouldered, fair, proud in a 
way, but with a smile that was the key to any heart 
22 


MANDERS 


he cared to unlock. He had, moreover, an air of 
gentility that made its impression upon her, so that 
to her sympathy was added a great deal of respect. 
After two or three mornings Marie found herself 
looking with increasing interest upon his canvas as 
she passed it on her way to and from the estrade. 
She began to hope that he would get on ; but 
generally she experienced a penitential regret as if 
she herself were in some way to blame for his slow 
advancement. 

This mood was heavily upon her one day when he 
seemed to be more than usually earnest and less than 
ever productive. It was near the end of her third 
week. “ Poor Monsieur Blakemore ! ” she murmured 
to herself as she dressed behind the curtain. Then 
by degrees, a little with each garment she put on, 
the idea came into her slow little brain that, perhaps, 
she might help him. There was a pleasant stimulus 
to her fancy in the thought. She knew very well 
that Blakemore nursed a sort of dejected ambition to 
have his work recognised in the class exhibition, and 
her thought was that there really might be a pos- 
sibility if only he could have more time than the 
others at his work. She decided to give him the 
opportunity. That is why she lingered behind the 
evergreens of the little cafe across from the gare Mt. 
Parnasse, waiting until Blakemore should come along. 
He appeared after a time, and Marie, free from the 
affectations of coquetry, yet not without reserve, came 
forward to meet him. There were no words wasted 

23 


MANDERS 


in needless preliminaries. Models and students are 
not stupefied by conventions. Marie smiled and held 
out her hand. Marie could smile like the Madonna 
Dolorosa, if any one can understand what I mean by 
that. A smile that at once pities and assuages the 
grief of humanity. Marie imagined there was a 
necessity in the present instance to pour out this 
balm of healing and refreshment. Blakemore under- 
stood something of this when he looked into her face, 
and he answered her smile before she had spoken 
a word. 

“ This is mighty nice of you, Marie. By George ! 
I believe you read my thoughts in the class this 
morning.” He spoke laughingly, taking her by the 
arm and moving up the boulevard with her. “ Then 
you don’t think me quite hopeless ? ” 

“ Oh ! Monsieur Walter ! ” 

The reproachfulness of her tone was lost in the 
comical turn she always gave his name, which she 
pronounced “ Voltaire,” with a sustained rising in- 
flection on the final syllable. Marie spoke very good, 
that is to say fairly grammatical, English queerly. 
Her words fell into order in general accord with 
rules, the result of her six years’ fidelity to the 
exactions of an English husband, but it was some- 
times necessary to make a reflective analysis of un- 
accustomed sounds before one could be certain of 
many of her words. But there was an artless charm 
in her speech that went very far toward persuading 
a masculine hearer that expression could not be 
24 


MANDERS 


better. Blakemore was much gratified by the friend- 
liness of her reproachful exclamation. 

“Then you don’t despise me for the way I am 
doing you?” 

“I suppose I should be very angry with anyone 
who makes me look ‘muddy’” she said, peeping 
up at him archly. “But one has to learn, is it 
not so, Monsieur Walter? And I thought that, 
perhaps, if you had more time — I mean more 
time with the model — you might — eh, Monsieur 
Walter?” 

“ Clear you up a bit ? that never occurred to me ! 
And will you do it?” he inquired, with eagerness. 
“ Will you give me the time ? I’d be sure to come 
out all right ! And I’d pay you better than they do 
at the school, too ! ” 

“ Oh, as for that — ” she began with a pretty 
protesting flirt of the hand. But Blakemore inter- 
rupted with the rush of one anxious to conclude an 
advantageous bargain. 

“ When can I have you ? ” 

“Oh! every afternoon.” 

“But I can’t come in the afternoons — that is to 
say seldom. How about the evenings ? ” 

Her superior knowledge of art rebuked his uncal- 
culating ardour. “But you can’t paint at night, 
Monsieur Walter! Think of your colours!” 

“Hang the colours, Marie! The bother with me 
is form. Besides it’s all nonsense this raving about 
daylight. I would just as lief have the effects got 

25 


MANDERS 


by gaslight. I’m going in to be original, anyway. 
Let us say evening, eh ? ” 

“ Very well,” she assented, a little amused. 

“Then it’s settled. You know where my rooms 
are?” 

“ Oh ! but you must come to me. I cannot leave 
my little one.” 

She said this with an air of comical importance. 
It rather pleased her to make conditions. It gave 
her a feeling of authority to which she was not 
used. 

“You may come to-night.” 

“ But to-night I have an engagement ! I could 
come after ten, though. How would that suit 
you ? ” 

“ The hour is nothing to me. One time or another 
as you please.” 

“To-night, then. I’ll begin at ten. Do you know, 
Marie, you are a deucedly accommodating, nice girl ? 
I’m awfully obliged to you. I’ll beat those fellows 
yet! See if I don’t. By George! I’ll make you a 
handsome present if I do. You can have anything 
you ask for ! ” 

“You’d better not promise that,” she said with 
a sagely warning shake of the head. “ I have been 
thinking of a little house with a garden ! ” 

“ Oh!” 

She laughed at him. He walked with her as far 
as the observatory, and their special bargain was 
made, for Blakemore viewed the matter in a strictly 
26 


MANDERS 


commercial light as far as Marie’s services were con- 
cerned. She was to have forty francs a week, 
considerably more than she got at the school, for 
the time she might pose for him. She would have 
preferred to give her services to help this handsome, 
inept student to success; but as Blakemore had 
plenty of this world’s goods he could see no virtue 
in Marie’s vague scheme of useless self-devotion. 
She sighed as she consented. In her precious 
shallow pate she had set up a glowing shrine 
sacrificial to a pretty heroism, and it disappointed 
her that Blakemore turned out to be prodigal 
rather than impecunious. 

Manders was snugly in bed and serenely asleep 
when Blakemore came to begin his strategic labours 
that night. • As the two conspirators were thoroughly 
in earnest there was no time wasted in idle formali- 
ties. Blakemore set up his easel and arranged his 
paints and brushes, a new outfit procured for the 
occasion, while Marie prepared to repeat her pose 
of the morning. The subject was a somewhat 
whimsical treatment of the “ Desolate Ariadne ” pros- 
trate upon the sea-shore. Marie’s sommier served 
imperfectly to typify the wave-serried sands upon 
which she curved in delicate nudity. The pose was 
an easy one to keep for any reasonable length of 
time, but Blakemore, utterly absorbed in his work, 
quite forgot the running minutes, and the period 
for rest came and passed and came again without 
admonishing him. Marie was not disposed to inter- 
27 


MANDERS 


rupt him. They had scarcely spoken since he first 
moistened his brash. This young man was, in spite 
of a certain moral variableness, one of those strenuous 
creatures who have a way of getting quite inside 
their occupation ; “ the conquerors ” some absurd 
philosopher has styled them. Marie could see the 
expression of increasing satisfaction in his face as he 
applied himself in freedom from critical or satirical 
comment, and it pleased her. Considerably after an 
hour of this concentrated work Blakemore uttered 
an exclamation of self-appreciation. 

“ I am getting it, Marie ! ” 

“ I am happy, monsieur.” 

He pushed back in his chair in contemplative way, 
his brush poised in readiness for any sudden inspira- 
tion. “ That is going to be something like.” 

Marie rose under the influence of his enthusiasm, 
and came to look over his shoulder. Really the 
result wasn’t so bad. There was chance for an en- 
couraging word. 

“ Oh ! it is beautiful ! ” 

“ Not just that, Marie. That is a little strong. 
But it is coming on ! I’ll show those fellows yet ! 
You are a brick, Marie.” He looked up. Recollec- 
tion seized him. “ By George ! I’ve been a brute. 
I’ve let the fire go down ! I’ve kept you at it a beast 
of a time ! Why didn’t you throw something at me ? 
Are you cold ? Wrap this blanket around you. I’ll 
rebuild the fire.” 

“ Oh ! I am not cold ; not tired,” she had been pro- 
28 


MANDiERS 


testing during his self-reproaches and hurried move- 
ments. “I am so happy that I am really helping 
you. Come ; let us go on ! ” 

“ No,” he said, as if he were mastering a great 
temptation, “ I am not ruffian enough for that. 
Besides, I’m very well satisfied. I have reached a 
point — and I’ve caught a trick ! Do you see the 
curve on that shoulder ? Monier could not do 
better ! That itself is good enough for one night. 
It was an inspiration you proposing this plan to me. 
It’s going to be the making of me ; I’m certain of it. 
I’m going to kiss you for it. There ! Well, shall I 
help you to dress ? ” 

“ No,” she said, smiling at the idea of anyone help- 
ing her to dress ; and then a pensive look stole away 
the smile as she remembered that Manders pere had 
liked to help her in the days of the honeymoon, 
and before he was Manders pere. Possibly there 
was just the tinge of sadness in her voice as she 
added, “ I shall not dress. I shall just put on my 
night-gown and slippers — unless you will let me get 
you something to eat ? ” 

“ No, I’ll get something to eat at Petitfour’s. By 
the way, why not come along with me ? It is early 
yet. Everybody will be there.” 

“ But I cannot leave my little one.” 

“ You should have a bonne” 

1 Oh, no. I like it better to take care of him my- 
self. We are such good friends, and he is so wise ! 
Ah ! as for that, sometimes I’m much afraid of him, 
29 


MANDERS 


he is so wise and I so foolish.” She said this in a 
deprecating way, but laughed as well. 

“ Manders is a jolly little chap, and you are a good 
girl, Marie. I’m going to be interested in you both, 
I see that.” 

“ But you don’t know my little one.” 

“ I’m going to, though. And you forget that I have 
been introduced to him. You know he knocked his 
ball into me in the gardens one afternoon.” 

This was an amusing reminder to Marie, and an 
agreeable one as well, of an incident that occurred the 
third day after she had returned to posing for M. 
Monier’s class. It was this petty accident that had 
fixed her notice upon Blakemore. She had taken 
Manders into the Luxembourg gardens for a romp, 
and their ball tossing, in happy disregard of persons 
passing, had been to the injury of Blakemore’s 
radiant silk hat. He was so gracious about it and 
patted the abashed Manders so comfortingly on 
the shoulder, and said so flatteringly to Marie, “ Oh, 
you are our pretty new model, aren’t you?” that 
Marie could not help exploring the class for him 
next day. That is how her sympathy with him 
began. 

“You were droll,” she said, “but very nice ! ” 

“Yes, a man is always comical with his hat 
knocked off*.” 

He had got the fire going and Marie, in gown 
and slippers, seated herself before the cheering 
flame. 


30 


MANDERS 


“ This is good, she said. “ Won’t you sit down, 
too?” 

“ Yes, long enough to safe-guard this wet paint a 
little, then I’ll bundle it up and be off. I’m going to 
leave my easel and paints here.” 

“ Of course,” she assented. 

Soon after, Blakemore went away, but instead 
of going to Petitfour’s he stopped at an unfre- 
quented place and had a bit of supper. He was not 
in the vein for the conversation of revellers and 
idlers. Ideals were spinning their illusions through 
his brain. He could not just decide why, but he felt 
a confidence in himself nothing had awakened before. 
He had done his first hour of really absorbing work, 
work that was shadowed by no self-consciousness, no 
sensitive dread of disparagement, and the result 
struck him as good. He was very grateful to Marie. 
It was all due to her. She had given him the right 
impulsion. He had a jubilant sense of the end to 
which it would carry him, for he had in this felicit- 
ous way got hold of the clue that should guide him 
out of the maze in which he had been groping for 
more than a year. He had laid hands on himself, 
so to speak. He strolled home in the light of the 
low- hung stars, and thought them larger and more 
brilliant, and the texture of the purple-black curtain 
behind them richer in velvet bloom than he had ever 
seen them before. Very sweet are the first sips from 
the poisoned chalice that Ambition holds smilingly 
to the lips of the credulous ! Blakemore went home 
3i 


MANDERS 


to lie down to rosy dreams in the clear perspective 
of which was a salon picture hung on the line. 

He was early at Marie’s the next night. The table 
had just been cleared, and Manders was marshalling 
his tin soldiers under the lamp’s light. Manders came 
forward to have his head patted and to make an 
apologetic little speech relative to the incident of the 
misdirected ball. Blakemore gave the boy’s cheek a 
friendly pinch. 

“ I think it was my hat that got in the way, 
Manders.” 

“Oh, I knew that all the time, monsieur. Well, 
I’m just going to kill some Germans.” 

“Take care they don’t kill you,” laughed Blake- 
more. 

“Oh, they can’t do that! Je swis Anglais” 
declared Manders conclusively, as he went back to 
his play. 

“ He is his father’s child, Marie.” 

“ Oh ! yes !/’ she smiled sweetly. “ I am quite 
afraid of him. He is so wise.” 

“ He is all right. Well, shall we get to work ! ” 

“ I shall be ready as soon as you, monsieur.” 

Soon Blakemore was engrossed in his work, and 
Manders was no less attentive to his battles. War 
is a very absorbing pastime. It is even more 
peremptory than painting, and the child, directing 
the prodigies of fate, was wholly oblivious to what 
passed behind him, although Blakemore was full 
of talkative ardour this evening. At length, when 
32 


MANDERS 


the victory which he foresaw was complete, Manders 
turned with an exultant shout. 

“ They are all dead, maman ! ” 

His glance took in the painter and his model before 
he had done speaking, and the last word was almost 
lost from the sentence, muffled as if there were not 
breath to utter it distinctly. The boy stood trans- 
fixed for a moment. The laughter drifted away 
from his face, and a curious infantine look of 
surprise came in the place of it. A gradual intelli- 
gence took hold upon him. Something he did not 
understand began to master him in the clenching of 
his little fists, in the clouding of his curl-draped face. 
The blood left his cheeks, and the gust of a ghostly 
tragedy touched and froze his heart till the pain of 
it hurt him, and he cried out — a cry so sharp, so 
savage, so unlike the cry of a child, that the others 
were startled by it; but before they were aware 
what it meant, the little man had rushed against 
the easel, beating it down with his fists, and had 
flung himself shelteringly upon the nude breast of 
his mother. 

Blakemore, amazed, imagining that some accident 
had happened, came towards the child, who was 
pouring out an unintelligible jargon of furious sounds. 
As Blakemore approached inquiringly, Manders turned 
upon him fiercely and shouted, — 

“Don’t touch my maman! Don’t dare to touch 
my maman ! ” Words the more menacing for being 
spoken in French. 


0 


MANDERS 


Singularly enough, Blakemore had no inclination 
to laugh. On the contrary, he looked in arrested 
wonderment at the child, and then his eyes turned in 
appeal to the mother; but Marie, holding Manders 
with one arm close against her breast, was trying in 
vain to draw protectingly about her the cover of the 
couch, her face scarlet with shame, her hot tears 
raining down upon the curls of her boy. 

Blakemore understood. Eve had become conscious 
of her nakedness. A well-fortified man of the world, 
or even one who had reached the cynical stage of the 
sexual cult, would have seen the humour of the 
situation. But Blakemore had the misfortune to be 
a youth in earnest. He felt a ridiculous tightness 
in his throat, and recognised his helplessness as he 
gazed upon these two children, the one quivering in 
the defence of an idol assailed, the other tremulous 
in unmerited self-abasement. Knowing nothing better 
to do, Blakemore took up his hat and stole softly out 
of the room. 


CHAPTER III 

When, next morning, M. Monier, observing a fixed 
rule, came into the atelier an hour after the time at 
which the class-work should have begun, he found the 
students, twenty in number, standing or lounging idly 
about, with their canvases untouched. The unwonted 
noise he heard as he came up the stairs had fore- 
warned him of something amiss, but he was none the 
less surprised to see his usually industrious pupils 
unemployed. 

“ Why are you not at work ? ” he asked, as he 
surveyed the groups from the doorway. 

“ That is what we would like to know,” came in 
responsive chorus. “ What have you done with 
Marie?” There was so much concert unanimity in 
the demand that M. Monier suspected a rehearsal, 
and to forestall any planned impertinence, he put 
himself into a rage of remonstrance. He could storm 
very well, and with so much suitability of savage 
aspect that the most familiar of his pupils never 
doubted the genuineness of his wrath. He alone 
knew the hypocrisy of it. In the confessional of his 
private emotions, M. Monier pitifully admitted that 
35 


MANDERS 


his heart had been beaten to a pulp by human 
sympathies, and was no longer capable of resistance 
to the plaints of frailty. The contradictory weaknesses 
of his character were known, however, in more than 
one squalid abode in the poor districts through which 
he prowled of an afternoon, “ looking for material,” as 
he said to any chance-met acquaintance, but in reality 
putting into practice some crude notions of com- 
munism he had imbibed with his mother’s milk. It is 
not, perhaps, a pleasant commentary on the prejudices 
of our modem society that one should be ashamed of 
one’s philanthropy and try to conceal its donative 
phases. But man born of the flesh must take note 
of the conceits of the flesh, and we have made it 
axiomatic that he who giveth openly hath an axe 
that needeth an edge. The spirit of diplomacy 
which led M. Monier to mask his benevolence with 
a niggardliness in personal expenditure, taught him 
to hide his sentimental infirmities under a brusquerie 
of speech and a severity of manner that had at least 
the virtue of keeping in subjection those of his pupils 
who subordinated the exactions of art to the blandish- 
ments of pleasure. 

Therefore, imagining that the show of idleness 
argued a purpose to frolic that might involve a 
joke at his expense, M. Monier launched into such 
a flood of invective and abuse as temporarily 
stunned the students into silence. “Paresseux!” 
with a finely ironical prolongation of the final 
syllable, was the most complimentary term dis- 
36 


MANDERS 


charged through the shaggy moustache that 
ambushed his kindly modelled lips. He strode to 
the platform, which he mounted, gesticulating and 
volleying as he went, and continued his harangue 
until he had but breath enough to order the students 
to set to work. 

Seizing upon the advantage which exhausted 
nature gave into their hands, the students with one 
accord, and at the top of their voices, repeated their 
salutatory demand, — 

“What have you done with Marie ?” 

For the first time M. Monier noticed the absence 
of the model. He looked about him. She could not 
be in hiding; there was no place for concealment, 
the curtain of the dressing corner being looped up 
and the barrel near by offering too snug a retreat 
for Marie’s by no means diminutive body. Besides, 
a calmer regard of the faces before him convinced 
the master that he had been theatrical without 
reason, and a touch of chagrin subdued him into 
apologetic mildness. He felt, too, some anxiety on 
Marie’s account. She was punctuality’s self. Her 
custom was to be in waiting as the class assembled. 
She had not been late a morning. Most certainly 
Marie was ill. 

“I beg your pardon, gentlemen. I am to blame 
for scolding you. But if we cannot have one model, 
we must do with another. I saw an old woman in 
the passage. Call her in, someone.” 

The massier retired, and presently returned ac- 
37 


MANDERS 


companied by Mere Pugens, who carried under her 
arm a square frame half covered by a copy of the 
Figaro. 

“Make haste, my good woman, get ready,” said 
M. Monier. Then, turning a wry face to the students, 
he added, “We must content ourselves with charcoal 
this morning. No time to get new canvases ready.” 

This solemn announcement was received with a 
roar of derisive laughter. 

“We don’t want to draw spheres,” said someone. 

M. Monier himself smiled. Mere Pugens was 
rather round. It was difficult to say where one 
curve left off and another began, the geometrical 
progression was so carelessly defined. 

Interpreting the amusement of the class in her 
own way, Mere Pugens, addressing herself to the 
master, said with some little asperity, — 

“Oh! you may laugh at the old woman now, M. 
Monier, but I remember very well the time when 
you thought Ernestine Naquet quite a tidy figure 
on the platform ! You were a student yourself in 
those days, M. Monier, and not above taking liberties, 
as I am alive to swear. Oh ! mon Diew, yes ! I could 
tell these pretty gentlemen that you used to smile 
in quite another way when this same Mere Pugens 
— who wasn’t Mere Pugens then — came to pose in 
the lamplight two flights up in the dirty alley off 
the Rue de Sevres. Not so very long ago, neither, 
if thirty years are half a lifetime ! And let me tell 
you, gentlemen, it was not posing that gave me up ; 

38 


MANDERS 


it was I that gave up posing, I, myself! And do 
you think I have brought my respectability here 
now to be painted after I have established myself 
in the world? Not at all, M. Monier ! That is 
what I come for, M. Blakemore,” thrusting the 
package she carried into Blakemore’s unwilling 
hands, “and to tell you, M. Monier, that Madame 
Manders is done with posing, too. I might have 
said it as prettily as she told me if I had found 
pretty people to say it to — but a service soonest done 
is best done. Good morning ! ” 

Mere Pugens, drawing her undulations into such 
dignity of carriage as she might, turned herself 
toward the door, singularly rosy of countenance. 

“ And is it really you, Ernestine ? ” M. Monier 
called after her laughingly, yet not unblushingly. 

“ Not at all ! not at all ! Only a fat old woman, 
at your service ! ” responded good Mere Pugens, as she 
went out, leaving the door open behind her. It is 
a fact in natural philosophy that ponderous persons 
never slam doors. That variety of emotional ex- 
pression is reserved to the lymphatic temperament. 

If M. Monier had any misgivings as to the effect of 
Mere Pugens’ somewhat imaginative revelations on 
the minds and spirits of his pupils, they were soon 
dispelled. Those young gentlemen, unmindful of him, 
were expectantly^ interested in the tell-tale counten- 
ance and abashed manner of Walter Blakemore. His 
awkward attempt to secrete the unmistakable pack- 
age by thrusting it down between his knees attracted 
39 


MANDERS 


a curious attention to it. He was surrounded by a 
crowd of chaffers slangily bantering him on the 
conquest of a brobdingnagian Phyllis with a chin 
beard, and demanding to see her portrait. 

Tom Milsom, who, by reason of his diminutive 
stature, was the admitted bully of the class, and 
engineered most of its mischief, made a sudden dive 
for the frame, upsetting Blakemore in his eagerness, 
and tore away the covering as he raised his prize to 
view. 

There was a hoot of disappointment from the 
others. Instead of new sport for a merry morning, 
here was only the “ study” upon which Blakemore 
had been labouring under their eyes for the past 
week, a study they already had gibed at to their 
satisfaction. 

“ But wait a minute, boys ! ” said Milsom, squaring 
the canvas on to an easel, “ there is something amus- 
ing about it. Don’t you see ! ” He turned with an 
expansive smile to catch the expressions of his fellows 
and to enjoy the confusion of Blakemore. “ Isn’t it 
amusing ? Eh ? He has been painting by lamp- 
light! You can hear the colours howling. I told 
you Blakemore was an original, didn’t I ? He’s going 
to get into the salon, aren’t you, Walter ? You ought 
to have your colours better labelled, my dear. But I 
daresay it doesn’t much matter. We are getting 
some queer notions in art. It’s all in the way you 
see things. Eh, M. Monier?” 

M. Monier had approached the group, and was 
40 


MANDERS 


looking at Blakemore’s work with a seriousness that 
arrested Milsom’s nonsense. He came nearer and 
took up the canvas. 

“Humph! You worked on this last night, M. 
Blakemore ? ” 

“Yes,” replied Blakemore, simply enough, but it 
seemed to amuse his friends, for they laughed. 

“ Then Marie is not ill ? ” said M. Monier, as he 
returned the canvas to its place, a shrewd gleam in 
his eyes. 

“How should I know, M. Monier? I have not 
seen her since the early part of last evening.” At 
the same time there was a guilt-offering of blushes 
in Blakemore’s cheeks, and his eye wanted its 
habitual pride of candour. Remarks of the various 
kinds that rather admit of hearing than of repetition, 
but which lose quality when paraphrased, were good- 
humouredly hurled at him. 

“ Young men will be young men, and women will 
be women,” sagely reasoned M. Monier, running his 
fingers through his beard and looking in reproachful 
indulgence upon Blakemore; “but you should not 
have stolen our favourite model. You should have 
robbed some other studio. Professional ethics, you 
know. However, you have shown taste in your 
selection. We can all testify that your mistress is 
well to look upon.” 

M. Monier imagined that he had foreseen some 
such termination to the exceptional devotion of the 
class to this one model for whom they voted with 


MANDERS 


scandalous regularity week after week, except when 
Marie had demanded a week or two for her own 
pleasant uses. His suspicion had not rested on 
Blakemore, however, and it did not altogether 
surprise, though it mystified him, when Blakemore, 
in chivalrous resentment of things said around him, 
hotly exclaimed, — 

“ You are a lot of beasts, who don’t know a virtuous 
woman from a cart-horse — ” 

“ Nor a boudoir from a billiard table,” volunteered a 
withered youth, in plum-coloured velvet suit, from 
beneath a white beret that overspread him like a 
sunshade. “ That is the sort of not-particular people 
we are.” 

“ You are not getting mad, Blakie ? ” queried 
Milsom, giving an impish twist to the ends of his 
promissory moustache. “ Don’t, my dear. I daresay 
you are quite welcome to her — you can have my share ; 
but you might have let us finish out with her here.” 

“ Yes, Blakemore, let us have her for the rest of 
the week ; don’t be a pig.” This was said with that 
drawling deliberateness which seems to be a protest 
against the necessity of speech, an almost comical 
characteristic of Nelson Parker, an Englishman of 
Blakemore’s age, and unintentionally a close com- 
petitor with Blakemore for the booby prize in 
drawing. 

“ Quite right, Blakemore ; Parker’s claims are as 
good as yours, don’t forget,” cried out someone, 
provoking a general volley that, through its very 
42 


MANDERS 


excesses, restored Blakemore to his good-humoured 
equilibrium. His gusts of temper were commonly 
followed by more than compensating bursts of sunni- 
ness. He clambered on to one of the stools, smiled 
charitably, waved his hand tranquillisingly up and 
down, right and left, and secured something akin to 
attentive silence. 

M. Monier, who was in the doorway, took advan- 
tage of the lull to say, — 

“We won’t do anything until after dejeuner. 
Afternoon as usual.” 

A shout of “Long live Monier” followed the re- 
tiring master, and Blakemore was invited to begin 
his confession. 

Blakemore’s voice was peculiarly melodious in 
speech, and the rich tones gave an interest to his 
commonplaces. “He never says anything; it is the 
way he says it,” was a sufficiently descriptive Hiber- 
nianism of Milsom’s to account for the readiness to 
listen to the young Virginian in an oratorical mood. 

“I want to tell you fellows something,” began 
Blakemore, knocking the ash from his cigarette and 
expelling a cloud from his lungs. 

“Put it in ‘nigger,’ old man,” advised the youth 
under the white beret. 

This was an allusion to the excellence with which 
Blakemore imitated the delightful dialect of the 
Southern negro, a dialect much abused by persons 
who know it only as they learn it from the carica- 
ture of negroes seen and heard on the minstrel stage. 

43 


MANDERS 


“No, I want to be serious with you,” answered 
Blakemore. “ I’m not going to make a speech, either. 
But I want you to understand me. I am not a 
moralist.” (Interruptions more or less derisive.) 
“My admiration for Joseph has its limits, and I 
never took much stock in St Anthony ; but there 
are varieties and modifications of virtue which I 
very much respect.” 

“ The more modified the better,” interposed Milsom. 

“It may be the fault of my early education,” 
continued Blakemore, not heeding the laughter at 
Milsom’s sally, “but it is my rule to believe every 
woman innocent until she prove herself guilty.” 

“ You should go out more,” said Milsom, borrowing 
a light from his neighbour. 

“ You fellows have a notion, it seems to me, that 
every girl who has to work for her living is herself 
an article of merchandise.” 

“ Experientia docet is a very respectable maxim,” 
remarked Milsom. 

“ If you put on the ‘ stultos,’ yes,” retorted Blake- 
more, “but clear- witted chaps get some values out 
of their own centres of conscience.” (Cries of “ Oh ! 
oh!” and “What are you getting at?”) “I just 
want to say this as pleasantly and as inoffensively 
as the circumstances will permit ; — when I see a 
man who takes it for granted that every unpro- 
tected woman is a cocotte, I suspect that he is a 
blackguard who is doubtful of his own paternity.” 

“ Oh, come, I say now ! That’s putting too much 
44 


MANDERS 


bitters in the sherry,” remonstrated the white beret. 
Others echoed him. 

“ Now, just one word about the girl you think I 
have taken for a mistress,” said Blakemore, insist- 
ently, when the commotion had subsided somewhat. 
Sfmply, but with persuasive earnestness, he told of 
Marie’s offer to aid him in his work, and, with a 
sensibility that surprised himself, described the in- 
cident of the evening before. The picture of the 
moral drama in the modest little home in the Rue 
St Jacques perhaps took too much colour from his 
own emotions, but it was so effectively drawn that 
even Milsom smoked in silence, letting pass more 
than one opportunity for the discharge of a cynicism. 

“Three cheers for little Manders,” said the white 
beret , when Blakemore pointed the climax of his 
story by getting down from the stool. 

“ And three cheers for Marie,” said Parker. “ She’s 
all right.” 

Having the morning at his disposal, and no definite 
plan to occupy the time, Blakemore determined to 
start out with his sketch-book for a walk along the 
quais. Bathed in the luminous colours of a June 
morning, the rich green of the overhanging trees, 
and the opalescent lights of the craft-ruffled river 
tempering the vivid flame to a harmony with the 
grey of the houses and the blue of the sky, he 
thought there could be no place in the world to 
offer more inspiration to an appreciative painter than 
the busy, life-thronged quais of Paris. Here was 
45 


MANDERS 


everything but altitude and distance to fill full the 
measure of desire. Character in all its variations; 
riches and poverty in all their degrees; happiness 
and misery in their extremes ; romance and mechan- 
ism ; poetry and materialism ; infancy and age ; here 
gathered in the comforting warmth of the benches, 
or under the shelter of the stately, carefully-tended 
trees, or on the breast of the waters, or in the crowd 
of the streets, quiescent or in motion, the world cen- 
tralised, types of the nations in juxtaposition, life 
epitome ! Yet the artists of Paris housed them- 
selves in studios in vain strivings to vitalise the 
nude ! 

Blakemore, who reasoned with himself in this wise, 
did not yet see clearly enough the obstacles to the 
carrying out of the plan for artistic reformation he 
had formed for himself in this particular. He was to 
awaken artists to a realisation of the possibilities 
of the quais, possibilities which he thought were too 
much disregarded, and it had become a habit prepara- 
tory to this mission that, in idle hours, he should take 
his sketch-book and pocket box of colours and go 
down to some chosen spot on the river to make the 
little aquarelles which were to authorise his future 
canvases. If there were no foolish enthusiasms in 
youth, there would be no noble achievements in 
maturity ; and the world owes much to the zeal that 
breaks in pieces on the rocks of its own uncovering. 

Going a little out of his way, guided by an 
attraction of which he was unconscious, Blakemore 
46 


MANDERS 


strolled into the Luxembourg Gardens. There was 
the customary swarm of children of all ages noisily 
engaged in their various sports, and he recalled the 
afternoon in the first days of spring when the ball 
thrown by Manders had knocked off his hat. Doubt- 
less Marie and Manders were somewhere in the 
Gardens now, though they were in none of the 
groups he could examine about him. There was a 
crowd about the empty bandstand, however. He 
loitered there for a while. He hoped he might 
catch sight of them, and yet was not altogether 
sorry not to come upon them. He was not quite 
sure of his ground. He had not wholly rid himself 
of a sense of guiltiness that magnified Manders into 
a formidable person whose dignity of soul had been 
greatly outraged. Blakemore did not like the idea 
of being abashed by the gaze of a child to whom 
he could not explain things. This reflection grew 
in importance with each failure to identify some 
woman and boy with the objects of his half-evasive 
search, until finally he got into retreat before it and 
went on in the direction of the north-east gate. 
When he came opposite the De Medici fountain, 
with new thoughts in his mind and anxiety sub- 
dued, an urchin in blue blouse, over the shoulders 
of which danced a profusion of golden-brown curls, 
came running across the walk resolutely calling, — 

“ Monsieur Bla’mo’ ! Monsieur Bla’mo’ ! ” 

Blakemore stopped. 

“Yes, Manders.” He smiled in a propitiatory 
47 


MANDERS 


way and put out his hand hesitatingly. He had 
an amused recognition of the fact that he was 
afraid the boy might not shake hands with him. 

But Manders was a peace messenger, and he 
promptly thrust his own into the outstretched hand. 

“ And how are you this morning ? ” There was 
gratitude in Blakemore’s tone. 

Without replying to the question, Manders, who 
spoke either English or French very prettily as 
occasion required, though he commonly mixed them, 
proceeded immediately to declare the reason of the 
arrest. 

“My maman says I am to tell you that I am 
very sorry that I was not genteel last night.” 

“Well, are you?” with a quizzical smile. 

“I don’t know. I don’t like being rude,” was 
the diplomatic answer. 

“You were not rude. You were a very manly 
little fellow. But you didn’t understand. Do you 
understand now?” 

“Maman told me, Monsieur Bla’mo’.” He said 
this with a great deal of gravity, looking frankly 
into Blakemore’s eyes, and without offering to 
withdraw the hand Blakemore still held in a self- 
defensive way. 

“ And what did your mamma say ? ” 

“She said it is never to be again.” Manders 
certainly did have a disturbingly wise way for one 
of his years. He spoke quite as if the decision were 
of his own ordering. 


48 


MANDERS 


“No ; it is never to be again,” assented Blakemore, 
with a final pressure of the sturdy little hand. “And 
you and I — are we to be good, warm friends ? ” 

“ Maman says you are a very nice man, and that I 
must be very nice to you.” 

“Where is your mamma?” 

“Over by the fountain. There, you can see her 
leaning over the railing, by the last urn. She saw 
you coming along the walk. She sent me to you. 
But I should have come anyhow if I had seen you 
myself.” 

“ Come, then, let us go to her.” 

It was easy enough to meet Marie now. Indeed, 
he thought it rather strange that Marie should blush 
as he came up, and be so eager to bend over Manders, 
kissing him repeatedly as if he had returned after 
a long absence, forgetting to offer her hand, and 
babbling hurried nothings which Blakemore converted 
into apologies for her folly of the evening past. He 
was aware of a pleasingly aggressive kind of happi- 
ness. The soft air of the morning, the splashes of 
sunshine, the moss- burnished, time-darkened stones of 
the fountain, and these two figures in the immediate 
foreground, conspired to strike the note of truancy 
in his spirit. He had lost his morning; why not 
make a day of it ? The idea saved him from any 
embarrassment over Marie’s unintelligible murmurs ; 
he cheerily disregarded her want of reserve. 

“ I am awfully glad I happened to run on to you, 
Marie. I was just going to take a boat down the 
D 


MANDERS 


river, it is such a jolly day for an outing. Come 
along with me. Let’s go to St Cloud for breakfast.” 

He spoke with such frank heartiness that she 
suddenly forgot that she had some reason for 
diffidence in the presence of these two, the man 
towering above her, and the child in her embrace. 
All feeling of that sort vanished before the welcome 
vision of a day of festivity in the country — for 
everything outside the fortifications was country to 
Marie. She looked up eagerly, her face radiating an 
infantine delight that almost immediately went into 
cloud as she looked ruefully from Blakemore to 
Manders. 

“ But you see I have the little one. I told Mother 
Pugens she would not have him to-day, and — ” 

“Nonsense! We don’t want to leave Manders 
with any Mother Pugens. He is going with us ; eh, 
Manders ? ” 

“Oh! Monsieur Bla’mo’, I love a ride on the 
river ! ” 

“ Come, then, away we go ! ” 

And away they went, Manders between the two, 
holding a hand of each, frolic in their eyes and 
pleasure in their hearts, for a holiday, such as this 
promised to be, went into their red-letter souvenirs. 

They were not the only ones to whom the charms 
of the river appealed, for the boat on to which they 
pushed their way at the Pont Royal pier was 
crowded with pleasure-seekers. They could only 
find standing room on the forward deck, but it was 
5 o 


MANDERS 


all one to them whether they stood or sat. To 
be on the gay river, the waters slipping under the 
swift little steamer, the banks of masonry, the 
busy wharfs, historical memorials, quaint scenes, a 
rich panoramic variety on either side gliding by 
them, earth, water, sky and all that moved in them 
seeming to rejoice in the full animation of the young 
summer, was so stimulating to the three friends that 
physical discomfort could not so much as threaten 
them. It was an additional pleasure to be jostled 
and crowded by eager fellow-excursionists who made 
every inconvenience the occasion of a friendly com- 
pliment. French crowds radiate amiability, when 
their mood is sunny, as no other crowd can. 

When the boat arrived at St Cloud it proved to 
be the destination of the majority of the passengers. 
There is no resort more favoured by Parisians than 
the former residence of the vanished kings and 
emperors of the inconstant French. Blakemore, 
Marie and Manders* had a numerous company to 
attend them up the hill. It was one of those days, 
too, in which St Cloud abandons itself to wedding 
breakfasts or early dinners, the scene being one of 
white-robed festivity about the principal restaurant 
to which Blakemore led his guests. 

“ Oh ! but there is a crowd ! ” said Marie, her eyes 
sparkling and her cheeks flushed by the agreeable 
excitement of her easily stirred emotions. “We 
sha’n’t be able to find a table!” 

“We’ll find something,” Blakemore declared con- 

51 


MANDERS 


fidently, and presently they were seated comfortably 
at the edge of the terrace under the cooling branches 
of a wide-leaved sycamore. 

There was plenty of time to reflect upon what 
they should have for breakfast. Service is tardy 
at St Cloud, as it is at most holiday resorts, but 
then eating is the least important incident of these 
merry gatherings ; laughter and the babble of 
pleasantries are the vital considerations. An occa- 
sional admonitory “ Gar£on ! ” answered by a pro- 
pitiatory “Voila!” may indicate the proper bounds 
of quiet forbearance, but the course of events is 
in no wise affected by these casual interjections. 

Blakemore hardly looked to Marie for intellectual 
interest. What it was that attracted him more than 
her physical beauty and magnetism he would have 
found it difficult to say, but that there was more 
than a sensuous charm he very well understood. He 
revolved the delicate problem as he rolled a cigarette, 
listening to her joyous prattle, watching the play of 
gladness in her grey-blue eyes, and the coming and 
going of smiles that matched so well with the deep 
dimple in her chin. 

“She is so deliciously feminine,” he thought, but 
was unaware how fully the words defined the artless 
creature in pink and white across the table from him. 
Man in general cares very much less for woman than 
for femininity ; Blakemore was especially susceptible 
to that type of the feminine which politeness names 
medieval, and which strongmindedness terms imbecile. 

52 


MANDERS 


The more seriously man has to battle with the con- 
ditions of life, the more positively he has to discipline 
and operate his mental forces, the more he is inclined 
to seek recreation and refreshment in the society that 
offers the lightest resistance to the repose of intellect- 
ual energy. 

“ What a bore it would be,” Blakemore continued, 
reasoning with himself, “ to come to St Cloud for an 
afternoon with a woman who has studied history in 
order to talk politics, and whose acquaintance with 
art and literature is made an excuse for a jargon of 
critical platitudes.” 

Impulsive gratitude for present freedom from such 
tyranny of foolish learning caused him to give the 
convenient ear of Manders a friendly twist as he 
asked, — 

“ Well, what are you going to have, my boy ? ” 

“Cake,” replied Manders, with the alertness of a 
well-prepared mind. 

“ Of course,” laughed Blakemore ; “ but what else ? ” 

“ Beer,” said Manders, again speaking a part 
rehearsed. They were served in time, and gave a 
leisurely attention to the things set before them 
in order, making altogether a very cheerful and 
memorable breakfast. 

It rather surprised Blakemore that, in spite of 
himself and the incessant sounds and scenes of 
frivolity about them, he and Marie drifted into a 
discussion of a subject as serious as the education of 
Manders. His father had taught the lad to read 
53 


MANDERS 


and he could scrawl a succession of curiously spelled 
words in the pretence of letter writing, but Marie 
confessed that she had given little or no thought to 
his further advancement. She imagined him too 
young for school, and opened her eyes with rebuking 
incredulity when Blakemore insisted that he could 
read Latin when he was at the age of Manders. 

“Then why are you not a priest?” she asked, 
Latin and the Church being inseparably united as 
cause and effect in her philosophy. But persuaded 
finally of a maternal obligation to equip Manders 
with better arms for the human warfare than could 
be got at the domestic fireside, a conclusion which 
inclined her to tears, Marie confessed that she was 
rather too poor of purse to indulge these somewhat 
eccentric notions of Blakemore. 

“Well, then, look here, Marie,” said Blakemore, 
lighting the brandy he had poured over the sugar 
lump in his coffee spoon, “ let’s make a bargain. I’ve 
got plenty of money and no one in particular to spend 
it on. I’ve been over here studying art for two 
years, and old Monier says my ideas of colour and 
drawing are altogether too original for me to hope 
for any great success in undraped figure work. He 
says I’d better go in for clothes and landscapes in 
which bad lines can be tolerably well concealed, and 
which admit of some caprices in colour. He is a 
fool, but I’m thinking of following his advice. Now, 
you have made up your mind not to pose any more 
in the old way, and yet you have got to live in some 
54 


MANDERS 


way. What I propose is this, you become my model 
for indoor and outdoor work — dressed, Manders, 
always dressed, you know — pose for me and for no 
one else, and 111 give you double studio wages and 
start Manders on the road to education. What do 
you say ? ” He sipped his coffee, looking at her over 
the rim of his cup. 

Marie laughed in an unsettled sort of way. The 
plan rather appealed to her, but she had an idea that 
it was Manders who should decide the question. She 
looked at him, but that young gentleman was busy 
getting the last particles of custard from one of the 
baffling little pots invented to discourage the eating 
of that tempting delicacy. She spoke to him. 

“ What do you say, mon petit ? Shall I send you 
to the Lycee ? ” 

“ All right,” responded Manders, without lifting his 
eyes ; “ but I suppose they’ll make me fight.” 

In this way it was agreed, and Blakemore took it 
upon himself to enter Manders at the ficole Alsacienne, 
but a short distance from Marie’s home, on the coming 
Monday. The three friends felt in their several ways 
that a matter of moment had been the outcome of 
that dejeuner under the trees, and the older two 
realised as well that they had made for themselves 
a bond of union closer and stronger than that of 
mere material interests. In Marie’s absurd little brain 
Blakemore was transfigured as a hero ; in Blake- 
more’s contemplation Marie was a defenceless, help- 
less mignonne brought under responsible protection, 
55 


MANDERS 


a protection that seemed to him wholly philanthropic 
and dispassionate. As for Manders, the prospect of 
coming into self-reliant contact, in the mysteries of 
school life, with strange boys filled his fancy with 
alluring enterprises, and he began to think Monday 
a long way off. 

As a finish to their day, they took the charming 
walk from St Cloud to Versailles through the Bois de 
Fausse-Reposes, the sun having slipped below the 
far rim of the world to give the scene the glory of 
the after-glow as they arrived tired but well content 
at the station in time to catch the express for Paris. 
What a day it had been ! Youth is the only 
alchemist. 

They had a compartment to themselves, and 
presently, weary of the gradually darkening view 
from the window, Manders, in a proprietary way, 
settled down, and went to sleep with his head 
pillowed against the breast of “Monsieur Bla’mo’.” 

“You see, we are going to be excellent friends,” 
said Blakemore, smiling at Marie across the way, and 
patting Manders softly on the shoulder. 

“ Oh, yes, Monsieur Walter, very good friends — 
all three, is it not ? ” 


56 


CHAPTER IV 


Blakemore lost no time in putting his agreement 
with Marie into operation. He had a studio and 
suite of rooms rez-de-chaussee in the Rue Danfert 
Rochereau, the side door of his salon opening upon 
a miniature garden, the vine-draped walls of which 
enclosed with great privacy a broken fountain and 
a decrepit tree. A splash of sunshine in the early 
afternoon warmed the petty square into a glow of 
beauty, and filled Blakemore’s mind with fanciful 
notions of what might be done with a pretty woman 
well posed in relation to the nymph of the fountain. 
In this exclusive space he might experiment in 
colours to his heart’s content unabashed and unscrupu- 
lous. Failure should be his teacher, and what success 
he might chance upon would have a double sweetness. 
Out of the art talk he had heard in the two years 
of his student’s life one bit of advice from a great 
painter had been chosen as his oracular guide, 
‘‘Never be afraid of spoiling your canvas. A 
hundred failures weigh nothing against one success.” 
He spoiled canvas profitably — if not to himself, 
certainly to M. Foinet, the benevolent dealer in the 
Rue Notre Dame des Champs. 

57 


MANDERS 


“ I am not coming in the afternoons for a while/* 
he had said to M. Monier the day after the excursion 
to St Cloud, which declaration in some occult way 
amused M. Monier. 

“ Eh, well ! Treat her well,” said the old painter. 

“ It isn’t that at all,” answered Blakemore, rather 
♦ irritated. 

“ Of course not, of course not,” chuckled M. 
Monier. “It never is.” 

Misjudged, as the disinterested always are, Blake- 
more had the sense to waste no words in self -vindica- 
tion. He carried himself off with all the dignity of 
his proportioned six feet, and some hours later began 
transferring to canvas his impressions of a young 
woman in a yellow gown of the Directoire style. 
Very contenting work he found it, and very agree- 
able was the half-hour of rest, when he and Marie 
sat in the somewhat luxuriously furnished salon, 
sipping wine from their glasses and nibbling petits 
gateaux. 

The day in the country had brought about wonders 
of understanding between them. Marie thought that 
she had never before known anyone quite so well as 
she seemed to know this considerate yet familiarly 
intimate young American, who had become the 
patron of Manders and her own benefactor. Under 
the influence of emotions she might not have been 
able to define, she revealed phases of character and 
qualities of mind which gave Blakemore a better 
opinion of her intelligence, and a clearer insight into 
53 


MANDERS 


her nature than before. He perceived a womanliness at 
the back of her ingenuousness that might, under stress 
of the right circumstances, develop into a force, equal 
on the one hand to an heroic martyrdom, or on the 
other, capable of tragic abandonment. He caught 
himself following a train of possibilities in either of 
these opposed directions, curiously balancing chances, 
noting the changes taking place in the hypothetical 
Marie, pursuing step by step a succession of im- 
perative incidents to the inevitable denouement. 
He became so interested that for the space of ten 
minutes he said nothing to Marie, his eyes fixed 
dreamily upon her face as if he read in its sweetly 
placid expression the index of his fancies. A casual 
remark of hers had seemed to him the key to her as 
yet unlocked character. A showy demi-mondaine , no 
older than Marie, a table or two beyond them on the 
terrace at St Cloud, had attracted their attention, 
and given rise to some worldly conversation between 
them. 

“ I should not want to be bad,” Marie had said, 
“but has a woman any choice, Monsieur Walter ? It 
depends on so many things beyond her control 
whether a woman shall be good or bad. You see, the 
world has been made by men for men. We women,” 
she made a pretty flourish with her hand as she 
laughingly looked up into the sweep of branches over 
her head, “ we women are like the leaves on the 
tree — tell me, which one, when the wind blows, will 
fall and which one will cling to the stem ? ” 

59 


MANDERS 


This was an astonishingly sage observation to come 
from the red lips of blue-eyed, dimpled-chinned 
Marie, and Blakemore was without a ready answer 
to it. He had laughed at her and said, — 

“ It is the nature of leaves to tumble, you know. 
They cannot argue the point, and they don’t know 
the difference between the tree-top and the mire. 
You haven’t offered a very good illustration. Try 
again.” He lightly struck a leaf from the branch 
with his stick as he spoke. 

“ Eh, well, Monsieur Walter, it is all the same to 
you men. You knock the leaves from the trees, and 
you trample on them when they have fallen. But 
it doesn’t matter. Leaf or woman, they are in the 
world for man’s pleasure.” She smiled, but there 
was just a shadow of seriousness in her eyes as she 
looked at him, seeming to invite a negative response. 

His reply was banal enough. 

“Yes, good women are here for man’s pleasure, 
Marie ; and it is only with good women that we find 
real pleasure. Only a few of us, after all, are asses 
enough not to know this.” 

“ Ho you know some of the good women, Monsieur 
Walter ? ” 

He looked at her intently a moment before answer- 
ing. The question was sincere. There was no mis- 
taking the wistful, straightforward eyes. 

“ Yes, a good many, Marie.” 

“ I should like to know a really good woman.” 

“ You are one yourself, Marie.” 

60 


MANDERS 


He said this with much earnestness. She looked 
at him in eager thankfulness. 

“ Oh, thank you, Monsieur Walter,” she exclaimed, 
and then turned with such ill-concealed pride to give 
the curls of Manders a caressing stroke that Blake- 
more thought nothing could be more touchingly in- 
fantine. Then it was she made the remark which 
Blakemore received as the key to her perplexing 
personality. 

“ I don’t dare believe you, Monsieur Walter. It 
appears to me that I have always been asleep inside, 
and that if I should ever wake up it would terrify 
me. And sometimes it seems as if I were just going 
to wake up, and my heart stops beating. You know, 
I think there are two or three Maries besides myself ? 
Am I not a fool, Monsieur Blakemore ? ” 

“ Two or three Maries besides herself ! ” What sort 
of creatures were they ? 

It was the train of events shaping the lives of 
these several Maries out of the possibilities of the 
innocent in the yellow gown that bore Blakemore 
so far into unconsciousness of the Marie before him. 

“ Have you forgotten me ? ” asked the embodied 
Marie finally, knocking the ash from his cigarette 
playfully with her fan. “Isn’t it time we got to 
work ? You will lose the sun.” 

“Yes, come. You see how easily I get lazy with 
half a chance. I daresay you will have to brace me 
up a lot. You are a straightaway sort of chap, 
aren’t you? You will keep me at it, eh?” 

61 


MANDERS 


She, laughing, looked up at him as he came beside 
her. “Yes, if you do not work very, very hard, I 
shall stop posing.” 

“ And serve me right, too.” He kissed her cheek, 
and they returned into the garden, to be sober- 
minded. 

Marie’s sober-mindedness had a vermilion tone that 
betrayed itself in her cheeks. Blakemore’s frank kiss, 
though bestowed in a careless, incidental manner, as 
unemotionally as he might have filliped a particle of 
ash from the lapel of his coat, had been by no means 
as lightly and as indifferently received. The tele- 
grapher may unconsciously touch his finger to the 
key of his instrument, but he sets in vibration a 
current of warm vitality that runs on to the end 
of time! Marie was one of those sensitive creatures 
to whom a caress is never without significance, with 
whom every familiarity is put under special inter- 
pretation, no allowance being made for the casual 
impulses by which so considerable a part of average 
conduct is ruled. In the estimation of such women, 
a kiss is either an injury or a beneficence, something 
that in either case readjusts former relations — a new 
element entering into the problem of values. 

Marie rather mused upon than reasoned from the 
incident, but her musings were at once satisfactory 
to herself, and not uncomplimentary to Blakemore. 

“ He is not like the rest. We are going to be very 
happy, Manders and Walter and I.” 

There was no more a “ Monsieur ” Walter for her ; 

62 


MANDERS 


that slight harrier of frivolous reserve had been 
whiffed away in the twinkling of an eye. She did 
not send her thoughts very far into the future. It 
was not her way. Sufficient unto the day is the 
pleasure thereof, was her principle of being. What 
might come was a thought much too vain. “If we 
cannot tell what will happen to-morrow, why vex 
our heads about it ? ” she had a demure way of ask- 
ing, and her life with the morally flaccid father of 
Manders had not tended to develop her small sense 
of personal responsibility. But as Blakemore always 
had an eye to the future, expending his energies 
upon plans for days that were to follow to-morrow, 
Marie could but be influenced to some extent by the 
work of which she was an inactive but important 
part, and in the fragmentary visions that carried 
Blakemore to success, in her fancy she caught 
glimpses of herself revolving in the orbit of his 
happiness. Being useful, and therefore helpful, to 
this young man was a present joy to her. It did 
not occur to her to consider a possible time when 
she would no longer be necessary to him. 

In the course of the third sitting, the afternoon of 
the day in which Manders valiantly entered into his 
campaign against primary education, old Fanchette, 
the shrivelled bonne in charge of Blakemore’s 
menage , came into the garden babbling apologies 
and holding a note in her hand. 

If Monsieur pleased, there was a servant at the 
door waiting to take Monsieur’s answer. 

. 63 


MANDERS 


The note came from an address in the Avenue 
Marceau, and Blakemore, who did not at once 
recognise the handwriting, uttered an exclamation 
of surprise as he glanced at the signature. Marie 
watched him curiously as he read it, and she 
imagined he had rather a kindly feeling for the 
writer, who she had no doubt was a woman, one 
of those good women, perhaps the good woman. 

“ A good joke on you, Marie ! Ill laugh at you over 
it when I come back. I must go and write an answer.” 

He tossed the letter on to the stool and ran 
into the house, followed by old Fanchette, who 
cackled away cheerfully, notwithstanding no atten- 
tion was given to what she said. 

Marie, not well schooled in mere fashionable scruples, 
and feeling perfectly free to partake of any merri- 
ment of which she was the object, innocently took up 
the note and spread it open. As her acquaintance with 
written English was distinctly formal, she read with 
some difficulty the angular script that was then 
much affected by young ladies who studied modes 
in handwriting as they followed fashions in dress. 

“ Dear Mr Blakemore, — What a time I have had 
finding out where you live ! And how astonished you 
will be that I can afford to spare a moment from my 
very first week in Paris to any young gentleman who 
makes himself difficult to find. 

“We arrived, mamma and I, just a week ago. Our 
second ‘outing’ was at St Cloud the day you were 
64 


MANDERS 


there. You may resent our not making ourselves 
known to you, but the fact is we were just the least 
tiny bit afraid that the young woman with you (it 
was she who drew my attention to you) was not 
too respectable, and mamma has the bad taste to 
be particular about such things. I should not have 
minded it myself. Fancy having to be as circum- 
spect in Paris as one is at home ! It is like burning 
candles by daylight. If I had imagined what a needle- 
in-the-haystack hunt I was to have for you, I should 
have defied mamma and taken my chances on the 
aforesaid young woman. 

“ However, our amiable consul happened to know 
enough about you to give me your address — though 
I haven’t the remotest idea where this ridiculously 
hyphenated street is — and I proceed to lay hands 
on you. Are you free for Tuesday afternoon ? If so, 
will you come over at three o’clock and go with us 
for a drive ? And we might go to one of those 
wicked restaurants I’ve heard so much about for 
something to eat afterward. (N.B . — I hope you will 
have the grace not to say that I suggested anything 
so indecorous !) 

“ Do come ! I have quantities of Washington and 
Baltimore gossip for you, besides a scrap or two 
picked up in New York. 

“Mamma sends her compliments — or she would 
if she knew I were writing to you. — Sincerely 
yours, 


Florence Storey. 


MANDERS 


* P.S. — There may be a young Englishman in our 
party, a Mr Mendenhall, with whom we got ac- 
quainted on the boat. 'Mamma thinks him stunning. 
I don’t. He is so intensely respectable that he is 
positively dull.” 

Marie read this note with some inquietude, and 
was going through it a second time when Blakemore 
reappeared. She saw in this Miss Storey an inter- 
ruption to the serious work to which Blakemore had 
set himself, and she hoped he would decline an 
invitation so prophetic of disaster. “ One can go to 
the devil very easily in Paris,” she had heard Manders 
pere say more than once, “wine and women are so 
cheap.” 

This easy slipping down the smooth Avernian 
way was, it seemed to her limited judgment, made 
doubly facile by drives in the Bois, followed by 
something to eat and drink in those gay restaurants 
where laughter holds carnival through the night. 
It was not at all the moral side of the problem 
with which she concerned herself. Marie’s ethical 
code was not a digest of social ordinances. The 
odourless flower of Puritanism is not native to the 
Latin Quarter. Her solicitude in Blakemore’s behalf 
had respect entirely of material conditions. So far 
as she had been able to observe, wine, women and 
song were the seductive commissionaires of Failure, 
allies of the river into which they led the tired 
revellers whose purses they had emptied. 

66 


MANDERS 


“ This isn’t one of the good women,” she concluded, 
after reading the letter, taking the French view of 
feminine unreserve. Therefore, when Blakemore 
came to interrupt her she looked up with so much 
that was apprehensive in her smile that he laughed 
at her question, — 

“You will not go, Walter?” 

“ Oh ! but I must go, Marie. These are old 
friends, family friends, you know, friends of my 
mother’s.” 

She brightened a little. 

“ Then this Miss Storey is not — ” she hesitated. 

“ Not what ? ” 

“ Is she very nice ? ” 

“ Oh, yes ; I think people find her tolerably 
nice.” 

“ And — and — good ? ” 

“ Decidedly.” 

She looked down at the letter, read a sentence 
over, and then asked dubiously, — 

“ ‘ Wicked ’ is ‘ mechant,’ is it not ? ” 

“Yes,” he answered, amused. 

She handed the letter to him with her finger on 
the word. “Do ‘good’ American girls write like 
that to young men?” she asked gravely. 

He frowned on finding that she had read the 
letter, but, at once understanding and excusing her, 
he answered, laughingly,— 

“ My dear Marie, you can never understand us, 
can you ? But you see Miss Storey did not under- 
67 


MANDERS 


stand you either. She suspected that you were not 
‘too respectable’ only because you are French and 
were out with a young fellow for a holiday. But 
she would be very greatly shocked if she could 
imagine that anybody suspects her. Miss Storey 
is what you call gai , but thoroughly comme il faut. 
Do you understand?” 

“Yes, I understand. Then I am not to come 
to-morrow ? ” 

“Why not? Come and bring Manders with you. 
There are books and pictures and the piano to 
amuse you, and Manders can play here in the garden. 
You can have dinner here. I’ll tell Fanchette. You 
can be mistress of the house, and be very jolly about 
it. And you might make Fanchette set things round 
a little. She is not the tidiest of housekeepers. And 
look here, if you want to be awfully nice you can 
sew some buttons on this jacket.” 

“ Eh, well ! But have you any buttons ? ” 

“No, you’ll have to buy some. But take your 
position. You’ve got to give me an extra half-hour 
or so. I can’t have to-morrow afternoon a dead loss, 
you know.” 

“I am going to get you very large buttons,” she 
said, smiling and adjusting her gown into the right 
folds, “ so large that they won’t go through the 
buttonholes.” 

“So I won’t wear them off, eh?” 

“Yes; you look better with your jacket open, 
also. You have a very good — what do you say?” 

68 


MANDERS 


illustrating her meaning with an upward sweep of 
her hand. 

“Chest?” 

“ Yes ; I have noticed it.” 

Admiration of strength bespeaks the normal woman. 


CHAPTER V 


Mrs Storey, as the wife of a cotton broker who 
operated successfully in New Orleans, thought it 
her privilege to take advantage of fortune without 
paying too much deference to economy. If this 
amiable disposition made a bachelor life for Mr 
Storey, and relieved him of the necessity of worry- 
ing over a steadily increasing bank account, it secured 
to Mrs Storey and her daughter innumerable benefits 
of travel, and the blessings of a frequent change of 
society. Now and then by letter Mr Storey would 
offer an apologetic remonstrance against what he 
feared bore some resemblance to a “ruinous ex- 
travagance,” but a marked paragraph in a foreign 
paper relative to the wife and daughter of the 
“ American Cotton King ” abashed him into a 
generous silence and a renewed energy of specula- 
tion. The more harried the commercial slave, the 
deeper is his pride in the social triumphs of his 
feminine representatives. He will toil along the 
flinty road to bankruptcy with the ineffable calm 
of relished martyrdom if he may be cheered by 
a vision of his “women folks” enviably radiant 
in purple and fine linen. Mrs Storey was not an 
70 


MANDERS 


entirely selfish woman, and she really found pleasure 
in giving her laboriously money-grubbing husband 
the comfort of knowing that the drafts he sent over 
with exact regularity were ungrudgingly used to the 
establishment of his European credit. “One must 
have an eye to appearances” was her social maxim 
and moral palladium. Facts could be left to take 
care of themselves. It is only just to say that Mrs 
Storey was fully of the opinion that facts could and 
would take care of themselves nicely and genteelly in 
her case. Once, when Mr Storey, finding the balance 
in the wrong column of the year’s account, ventured 
to ask what they would do if there should come a 
crash, the estimable and sure-minded Mrs Storey 
tapped his knuckles with her shapely fingers, and 
said, with definite rebuke, — 

“ My dear Henry, you never have crashed ! Why 
in the world are you at so much pains to crash in 
imagination? If the worst comes to the worst, as 
I grant you things do sometimes happen that 
way, you will be no worse off than you were when 
I married you twenty-six years ago. We could go 
back to the little Mississippi plantation, and live as 
we used to live before you took it into your head 
to get rich.” 

“ But Florence — ” Mr Storey began, with an argu- 
mentative inflection. 

“Florence is my affair,” interrupted Mrs Storey, 
with good-natured decision. “ My sole object in 
life is to do you credit as a wife and to provide 
7 1 


MANDERS 


Florence with a husband who will do you credit 
as a son-in-law. What more can a reasonable man 
ask of his family ? ” 

“Well, why don’t you encourage Walter Blake- 
more? He is the sort of man I’d like to see 
Florrie marry. He is just like his father as I 
knew him at college, and he promises to be as 
fine a man as his father is now. I believe they 
like each other, and if you would just let Florrie 
alone — ” 

“ Really, Henry,” Mrs Storey interposed, with that 
smile of mixed indulgence and reproof with which 
superior minds correct our follies, “I can’t let you 
run on in that absurd way. Your romantic notion 
of wanting to marry your daughter to the son of 
an old schoolmate and army comrade is an eigh- 
teenth century sentiment not at all in accord with 
the practical intelligence of our times. New social 
conditions are making in this country, and it is 
necessary that one be in the movement if one does 
not want to be overwhelmed by it. I have ambitions 
for Florence. I am investing your fortune in a 
social speculation. Now, don’t meddle. I understand 
Florence perfectly. You have $500,000 well invested 
in her name which she is to have as a wedding 
portion — ” 

“If we don’t go to pot before.” 

“Don’t interrupt. With that amount of money 
and her appearance — besides, she isn’t a fool — I 
expect to do very much better than surrender to 
72 


MANDERS 


Walter Blakemore, excellent young man that he is. 
There is no place in the world where a title counts 
for as much as it does in the United States — and a 
pretty girl with $500,000 can pick up a very respect- 
able title in the money markets of Europe.” 

“ Pooh ! I don’t believe Florrie cares a damn for a 
title,” said Mr Storey, bluntly. 

“I am glad you have so early introduced man’s 
substitute for argument, my dear. I can conclude 
that the subject is settled between us, and we need 
say no more about it. You concede a point with 
charming candour. Shall we get ready for dinner ? ” 
The characters of the parents having been thus 
generalised, there need be no attempt to analyse the 
disposition of the daughter, who, taking something 
from the natures of the two, grew to womanhood 
under the exclusively maternal direction. 

There had not been a great deal to justify Mr 
Storey in his idea of bestowing Florence upon Walter 
Blakemore. An intimate childhood, modified by 
several years of separation on the removal of the 
Storeys from Virginia to Mississippi, a subsequent 
renewal of friendship when Blakemore came out of 
college and profited socially by his father’s judicial 
position in Washington, Florence being then little 
more than sixteen and Blakemore not yet twenty- 
two, some further increase of interest by brief seasons 
in Baltimore, at the seashore and in New York, and 
then Blakemore’s running away to Paris with a 
sudden resolve to fashion himself into an artist — 
73 


. MANDERS 


these were the too unsubstantial foundations upon 
which Mr Storey builded his unauthorised romance 
of paternal providence. 

It had been three years since their last meeting, and 
Blakemore wondered if the change of address from 
“ Dear Walter ” to the “ Dear Mr Blakemore ” of the 
note in his pocket argued a corresponding change in 
the sentiments of Florence, and meant to inform him 
that their friendship was to be conducted upon a 
more strictly formal basis. As the fiacre began the 
ascent of the Avenue Marceau at what seemed to him 
an unwonted speed, his thoughts, which had been 
composed enough until then, got into an abominable 
panic. He could not recall a like experience of 
humiliating fear. Coming opposite to the fatal 
number, he had a strong inclination to tell the cabman 
to drive on, and as he climbed the heavily carpeted 
stairs towards the second floor, they seemed to give 
way beneath his feet. The expostulatory phrases he 
addressed to himself were not sufficiently reassuring, 
and he hesitated some moments in moist anxiety 
before he mustered courage to pull the bell-rope. 
Five minutes afterwards he marvelled what it was 
had made him such a poltroon. 

Florence came alone into the salon to welcome him, 
calling out to him as she entered a greeting of such 
frank pleasure that he hardly noticed how much 
addition of personal distinction the last three matur- 
ing years had given her, and only recognised the 
friend to whom he had said good-bye on the sands 
74 


MANDERS 


at Long Branch when the stars were shining. Old 
acquaintances who, after some years of separation, 
meet in Paris for the first time are not ceremonious. 
The atmosphere of that city is a different chemical 
combination altogether from that of any other, and it 
acts upon foreign systems so instantly and so radically 
that victims of it are unconscious of the alterations 
they undergo. Blakemore, who had been long enough 
resident in the vivid capital to have recovered some- 
thing of the normal balance that returns when reason 
has had time to strip the life of its artificial gilding, 
recognised the familiar symptoms in the feverish 
vivacity of Miss Storey’s conversation. He was not 
at all surprised nor much shocked when, in answer 
to his conventional question as to how she liked 
Paris, she said, with a comical impulsiveness that 
took off the edge of her words, — 

“ It makes me feel as if I were full of the 
devil!” 

“ You will get over that,” he said, laughingly. 

“ Oh ! I should hope so. But I am afraid it is 
going to be so slow a process that I’ll be burned to 
a cinder before the season is over. Why, when we 
came down the Champs Elysee yesterday, swinging 
along through that brilliant crowd, I had a mad wish 
to tumble the coachman off the box and take the 
reins myself. I’d give anything to drive full head 
down that splendid avenue just for the sensation 
of it. But as that is out of the question — mother 
is becoming villainously prudish — you’ve got to 
75 


MANDERS 


find me a vent for my excited state of mind, which 
is dangerously high pressure.” 

There was not much that was serious in the 
mischievous eyes into which Blakemore looked, but 
he thought there was the shadow of more than banter 
in her words. “Why the deuce will girls talk in 
this way ? ” was his mental comment, but he said 
aloud in her own vein, — 

“Well, what would you like to do?” 

“ Something wicked — something desperately wicked ! 
What is there one can do ? Something to remember 
and blush about when one is old and axiomatic ? ” 

“ You shouldn’t expect that sort of thing in Paris. 
There is nothing wicked here. Everything is con- 
ventional, even suicide. You cannot do anything 
to shock the Parisians.” 

“ But, you stupid fellow, it is not the Parisians I 
wish to shock ; it is myself ! ” 

“Very well; I’ll think of something.” 

Mrs Storey came in, several degrees gayer in dress 
than Florence, and appearing not so many years 
older. The lady had so far improved upon nature 
in the matter of complexion as to have secured a 
youthful bloom and smoothness of skin which 
seemed the fresher for the contrast of her grey- 
threaded black hair. Always faultlessly dressed, 
and thoroughly skilled in the art of wearing 
garments as if they were integral parts of the 
body, Mrs Storey was altogether an agreeable object 
upon which to rest the eye. 

76 


MANDERS 


She was very affable to Blakemore, but with the 
patronising affability which holds one stationary 
at the arm’s length of friendship, tacitly forbid- 
ding a closer intimacy. Had she possessed force 
of character equal to her reserve of manner, Mrs 
Storey would have been a remarkable woman. 
Unfortunately for Florence, Mrs Storey was p c e- 
cisely the sort of woman to whom the responsibility 
of rearing a daughter should never be confided. 
Blakemore, divining without analysing her moral 
and mental deficiencies, saw in her one of those 
chaperons who shield rather than restrain the 
impulsive tendencies of a tod ardent protegee. It 
was very evident that Florence was quite accustomed 
to having her own way, notwithstanding the habit 
of appealing to her mother for approval of an 
opinion or assent to a plan. The outward flourish 
of deference was mere diplomacy by which the 
mother was deceived into the belief that her 
judgment governed the conduct of the daughter. 
It was an amusing little comedy, because both the 
players in it were so earnest in their respective rSles, 
and Blakemore was in doubt whether Florence 
was not in some measure self-deceived by the filial 
candour she affected with such address. 

“ We must apologise to you,” Mrs Storey said, “ for 
the absence of Mr Mendenhall, who expected to be 
of our party. But,” turning to Florence, “didn’t 
you arrange that he should join us somewhere or 
other ? ” 


77 


MANDERS 


“It was your own arrangement, mamma. We 
were to take him up at the Madrid at five o’clock. 
Don’t you think it fascinating at the Madrid ? ” she 
asked of Blakemore with an eager smile. 

“ One sees ‘ all Paris ’ there, surely — the good and 
the bad, democratically mixed,” he assented, glanc- 
ing inquisitively at Mrs Storey. 

“ That is the charm of it,” said Florence. “ There 
is such an exhilarating sense of impropriety in hob- 
nobbing with ‘ all Paris/ as you call it. To be in it 
without exactly being of it — ” 

“ My dear Florence ! ” expostulated Mrs Storey, 
“ don’t give Mr Blakemore the impression that we 
are frequenters or a place we have visited but once.” 

“ Oh, I assure you, Mrs Storey, to frequent the 
Madrid is quite a matter of course with the gay 
world of Paris. Not to be seen there of an after- 
noon is to lose a day out of the calendar of pleasure.” 

“ Is that your practice ? ” Florence asked, with a 
peculiarly expressive glance sideways at him. 

“ No. Unluckily I have got out of the butterfly 
and gone back into the grub state. I’m a student, 
you know.” 

“ And do you stick at it ? ” 

“ Yes ; hard at it.” 

“ How are you coming on ? ” asked Mrs Storey, as 
if persuaded of her qualification to pass judgment 
on artistic progress. 

“ Very badly, I’m afraid. Old Monier says my feet 
look like gigots” 


78 


MANDERS 


“ Good heaven ! what have your feet to do with 
painting ? ” Mrs Storey exclaimed, at the same time 
taking in the trim set of Blakemore’s patent leather 
boots. 

Florence laughed irreverently, making a gesture 
of despair. 

“ Mamma ! How innocent you are ! My mother is 
a literalist, Walter, so you must be very careful how 
you talk about spades.” 

This inadvertent use of his first name was grati- 
fying to Blakemore, who thought it as cordial as 
it was spontaneous, a chance note from other days 
that set a whole harmony in vibration. He saw, 
too, that she was aware of the slip, and he knew 
that the fictitious formality she had introduced 
between them was dismissed from that moment. 
Some minutes later Florence proved the justness of 
his conclusion by asking of her mother in a tone of 
surprise, as if but then noting the fact, — 

“ But why do you address him as £ Mr Blakemore ’ ? 
That gives us no claim on him whatever ; whereas 
I propose to make very free use of him as long as we 
stop in Paris. May I not, Walter ? ” 

Mrs Storey was properly vexed. When Florence 
had announced her intention of writing Blakemore 
a note of summons, there had been a careful discus- 
sion of the relations Mrs Storey would permit. A 
polite friendliness should instruct the young gentle- 
man how great are the sentimental differences 
between the two points of a three years’ social hiatus. 

79 


MANDERS 


“Besides,” contended the estimable lady with the 
dogmatism of an experienced campaigner, “nathing 
could be more bizarre than going through the trouble 
and cost of European culture if you are to end by 
marrying a provincial nobody.” 

That Florence should so imprudently set at nought 
the solemnities of a sage conference was quite enough 
to justify a rebuke, the right wording of which Mrs 
Storey was casting about in her mind to find when 
a servant entered to announce that madame’s carriage 
was in readiness. 

The ladies had only to give to hair and toilet those 
mysterious final pats and thrusts before a mirror, 
which to the masculine perception are entirely with- 
out result, and in ten minutes’ time they were seated 
in the smart carriage, with liveried coachman and 
footman, which Mrs Storey had hired ensemble for 
the rest of the season. 

After a drive of an hour or more, during which 
joyous excitement Florence had a comforting number 
of bows from friends and acquaintances, they went to 
keep their appointment at the Madrid. Mr Menden- 
hall had been thoughtful enough to reserve a table, 
at which he sat in isolated sovereignty as they 
drove up. 

Blakemore saw in Mr John Mendenhall an average, 
well-bred English gentleman, some years older than 
himself, neither more nor less interesting than the 
majority of his class, such a man as he could 
denominate “ a good fellow,” and certainly not more 
So 


MANDERS 

dull than need be. Indeed, he presently began to 
suspect the sincerity of Florence’s postscript to her 
note, and to attach some importance to her casual 
remark in the carriage that Mr Mendenhall had only 
an old man, an invalid, his uncle, between him and 
a baronage, so that he was in danger of one day 
becoming a peer. He thought her far too willing to 
show this heir-conditional the amiabilities of her 
temper, and was more annoyed than he should have 
been when she suddenly asked, with a malicious 
twinkle, it seemed to him, “ Who was the pretty girl 
to whom you were so devoted at St Cloud the other 
day ? Was that a genuine studio grisette V* 

“ Oh ! that genus of grisettes has been extinct 
these many years,” he said, conscious of more than a 
becoming colour in his face, and glad that Menden- 
hall was talking to Mrs Storey at the moment; 
“that was Madame Manders.” 

“Ah!” said Florence, with the air of one having 
been fully enlightened, “Then that was her little 
boy with you ? ” 

“Yes, that was Manders.” 

“Manders! Is that his Christian name?” 

“ No,” he laughed ; “ his name is Edouard, but his 
father, who was also an Edward, always called him 
‘ Manders ’ to prevent confusion in the menage. The 
name seems to fit him ; he is an odd little chap.” 

“And is Monsieur Manders one of your inti- 
mates ? ” 

“I never had the pleasure of knowing Monsieur 
F 


MANDERS 


Manders. He got through with life before I made 
the acquaintance of his family.” 

“A widow, then! that makes it more interesting, 
doesn’t it ? ” 

“I wonder if you are talking of Edward Manders 
who drowned himself five or six months ago ? ” asked 
Mr Mendenhall. 

“Drowned himself!” exclaimed Florence. “How 
romantic! What an uncommonly fortunate fellow 
you are, Walter!” 

“Yes,” said Blakemore, answering Mr Mendenhall. 
“ Did you know him ? ” 

“ We were at Cambridge together. Poor devil! He 
went to the dogs in a hurry. One of the sort money 
ruins, you know. Plenty of good qualities, but no 
balance. Made a bad go of it over here, and the 
family shut the doors on him. Took up with a 
Latin Quarter danseuse, or something of the kind 
— I don’t know the particulars — who helped him 
on his way to the bow-wows.” 

“You have been misinformed,” Blakemore inter- 
rupted warmly ; “ he married a most estimable girl, 
one worthy of any man’s respect.” 

“ Yes, Mr Blakemore knows the widow intimately,” 
Florence explained, smiling significantly at Blake- 
more. 

“ Really ! ” said Mrs Storey, as if she doubted that 
the intimacy was conclusive proof of the widow’s 
respectability. “ I daresay Mr Blakemore has a some- 
what general acquaintance.” 

82 


MANDERS 


“Then you know Mrs Manders?” Mr Mendenhall 
asked, with deferential politeness. 

“Quite well,” assented Blakemore. 

“And she is not what the family believes her to 
be ? ” 

“She is a thoroughly good woman,” said Blake- 
more, with a dignity that allowed no doubt of his 
sincerity. 

Mr Mendenhall slightly raised his eyebrows in 
disagreement with the nod of acquiescence he gave 
to Blakemore’s statement as he asked, — 

“ Don’t you think it strange, then, that she 
should sign a paper declaring that her child had 
no claim whatever on the Manders family?” 

“ She signed such a paper ? ” Blakemore asked 
incredulously. 

“Mark Manders, Ned’s younger brother, told me 
so at the club one night not long afterwards.” 

“ Marie — Madame Manders says her husband’s 
brothers were unkind to her and terrified her. If 
she signed any such paper — ” 

“ I hardly think they would do anything like 
that,” said Mr Mendenhall, quietly, anticipating 
Blakemore’s accusation and disposing of it. 

The check was timely. It brought Blakemore to 
a consciousness of symptoms of rising temper in his 
blood, and gave him opportunity to modify his pro- 
posed remark. 

“ I was only going to say,” he continued, in matter- 
of-fact tone, but with a deprecatory look at Florence, 
83 


MANDERS 


“that if Madame Manders signed such a paper, she 
did not realise the importance of her act.” 

“Perhaps,” said Mr Mendenhall, shrugging his 
shoulders. Then he added, looking over his wine 
glass at Blakemore, and smiling as only worldly- 
minded men have learned to smile when they speak 
of indifferent women, “But it really doesn’t matter, 
I suppose. We waste a lot of time with our ridi- 
culous prejudices in this higgledy-piggledy world of 
ours. Don’t you think so, Miss Storey ? ” 

“ I can’t say,” replied that young lady ; “ I haven’t 
a prejudice of any sort, unless an objection to sitting 
too long in one place amounts to a prejudice. I 
should love to walk about a little. Can’t we?” 

Mr Mendenhall had taken a box for the theatre for 
that night. Got was to play. Blakemore was per- 
suaded, much too easily, Mrs Storey thought, to 
join the party after dinner, he having declared it 
impossible that he should dress and return in time 
to dine with them. 

“ You look well enough to come along as you are,” 
Florence had urged. “ The French are indifferent to 
evening dress, you know.” 

“ But I am afraid Mr Mendenhall isn’t,” Blakemore 
replied good-humouredly, but quite resolved not to go. 

“ I confess,” Mr Mendenhall admitted smilingly, 
“that I think a morning coat quite capable of dis- 
turbing the unities of a box-party. Still — ” 

Blakemore found the shaded lamp burning on the 
table of his salon when he returned to his apart- 
84 


MANDERS 


ments, the rosy light falling on the white square of 
a note Marie had left for him. Fanchette came in 
to direct his attention to it, and to babble her super- 
fluous opinions of the merits of the “tres gentille 
fille” and her “sage petit gar9on,” who had gone 
away scarcely half an hour before. 

Marie’s penmanship did not proclaim an adept in 
writing, but Blakemore thought the sentiment of the 
large scrawled words sufficiently excused the want 
of skill. 

“We have been very happy here to-day, only not 
as happy as we would have been if you had come 
home to dinner. I put on the yellow gown and sat 
as I would have sat for you, and Manders looked at 
me a long time and then he said, ‘ You are a very 
pretty maman.’ Is he not only a silly little boy ? 
Shall I come to-morrow ? or has the nice young lady 
taken my painter away from me ? ” 

Blakemore folded up the note and put it in his 
pocket, without exactly knowing why. 


55 


CHAPTER VI 


Not only did the work in the little garden 
suffer many interruptions, but Blakemore’s morning 
absences from the school, or “ Academy,” as M. Monier 
preferred to hear it named, began also to be the 
subject of more or less complimentary gossip. Tom 
Milsom declared with an affectation of grave solici- 
tude that their fellow student was “going it,” an 
ambiguous judgment, but one to which the others 
deferred as if “ going it ” definitely described a 
catalogued human infirmity. That it was a re- 
mediable infirmity they recognised by appointing a 
committee of remonstrance, with Milsom as chairman, 
and there was much grave talk directed against the 
peccant Blakemore during the “ rest ” in the morning 
of his next appearance. There was an intimation 
that continued negligence of the sort complained 
of might lead to the offender’s being hung up 
and painted, a punitive measure only applied, in 
the natural order of things, to an objectionable 
“nouveau.” Blakemore did not present the appear- 
ance of one greatly intimidated, and there was not 
that amendment of conduct which argues a penitent 
spirit. Nor did the negative chidings of Marie, who 


MANDERS 


asked if it was in any way her fault that the girl in 
yellow came on so slowly, have a more corrective 
influence. She came regularly every afternoon at 
the appointed hour, obedient to a punctilious sense 
of obligation, though with increasing regularity 
Fanchette announced, — 

“Monsieur will not be here to-day.” 

Marie was usually accompanied by Manders now. 
The child, released from scholastic discipline at four 
o’clock, had begun to have a repugnance to the 
society of Mother Pugens and the slip-shod girl 
who came to fetch him from the school. He did not 
make his objections very clear to Marie, but the fact 
was Mother Pugens had a fondness for insinuating 
bits of curious philosophy into her affable chats 
with Manders, and he got from them an indistinct 
impression of a skeleton which Mother Pugens 
supposed Marie to have hidden away somewhere. 
Her generalisations were tending rapidly toward 
particulars. 

“It’s a pity,” she said one day, “but you will 
know sometime, and for my part I think you are old 
enough to be told now. You will be coming upon 
the skeleton as a surprise some fine evening, and then 
what will that silly maman of yours have to say, 
I should like to know, you poor dear!” Then the 
good soul patted the child comfortingly on the head 
and asked, “ Hadn’t I better tell you, my dear ? ” 
Manders, his eyes more eloquent than his lips, 
looked frowningly up at her, and declared with 
87 


MANDERS 


energy, “ If you tell me anything my maman won’t 
tell me, I shall hate you ! ” 

But his mind got into troublesome wonderment, 
nevertheless, and Mother Pugens, whose bon-bons 
and little cakes one time gave sweetness to her 
really good-natured countenance, was transformed by 
degrees into an ogre in Manders’ sight, her benevolent 
smile narrowing into a malignant leer, her terms of 
endearment becoming abominable seductions. In the 
degree that the loose-tongued shopwoman diminished 
in his regard, Marie became more and more the 
worthy object of his passionate devotion ; and when at 
last she yielded to his entreaties to come to the school 
for him herself, it only needed that she should make 
him the companion of her walk to Blakemore’s, 
where he was permitted to make free with the estab- 
lishment, to fill up and make overflow his liberal 
cup of happiness. These were pleasant days for 
Manders, and he did not at all share with Marie her 
concern for the artistic laxity of the master of the 
well-appointed rooms and the pleasant garden. In- 
deed, there was some gain to him from these absences, 
for Marie, whom Manders pere had taught some 
things, made use of the piano and sang little songs 
with mellow, sweet voice in a way to enchant 
Manders, whose love of music was not, of course, 
tinctured by the critical acid. He would lean against 
the instrument in a position to see her face, and 
never wearied of listening to her. Sometimes there 
were tears in his eyes, and he would come nearer to 
S3 


MANDERS 


his mother, stealing an arm about her waist, as if the 
melody had in it a premonition that the singer would 
not always be here within hand touch. One song in 
particular affected him, the air of which was so simple 
that he had caught it, and he knew without under- 
standing one of the verses that sang itself in his 
memory often when he lay waiting in his cot for 
tardy sleep. 

If the light should go and the roses fade, 

And earth grow cold and the birds not sing, 

My heart should not be the least afraid, 

For love of you makes eternal spring ! 

But should we miss love, you and I, 

Though death were life my soul would die ! 

The song was for him, and Marie was the giver of 
the spring so full of gladness. He dreamed some- 
times that they two had lost the love from which life 
and brightness and happiness arose, and that Marie 
had gone a long journey in the darkness in quest of 
it. Waked from sleep by his own sobbing, he would 
go, trembling with forebodings, to caress with his 
finger tips the warm cheek of the sleeper, so happily 
unconscious of his fears. These dreams and peturba- 
tions were his own secret, which he never thought of 
confiding to Marie; but the remembrance of them 
came vividly into his mind whenever she sang this 
song, and his arm was put out to keep her from 
gliding away from him into that desolate and haunted 
darkness. 

The child was so much stronger than the woman. 

89 


MANDERS 


June was drawing to a close, and the Storeys were 
preparing to go to Switzerland. Mrs Storey had 
made many vain flutterings to hasten the departure. 
Her reason for such eagerness to quit a scene in 
which she found the fullest gratification of what she 
was pleased to term her hedonic tastes, was expressed 
in a contemptuous paragraph in one of her letters to 
Mr Storey. “ Florence is irritating the life out of 
me. The girl has your vulgar want of decent ambi- 
tion, and persists in fooling away her time and 
opportunities with this stupid Walter Blakemore, who 
seems more drearily commonplace than ever. She 
has picked up some of your prattle about men who 
achieve their own distinction, and talks of Blakemore’s 
artistic genius as if a mere picture painter could ever 
compare with an hereditary peer of England — for I 
have told you that Mr Mendenhall is entitled, or 
some day will be entitled, to sit in the House of Lords. 
I suppose you cannot see any choice between plain 
Mrs and Lady, but that is only because you haven’t 
an idea beyond the balancing of your ledger. Mr 
Mendenhall will go to Geneva with us if I can ever 
bring Florence to be reasonable enough to let her 
trunks be packed, but she is now gushing Blake- 
more’s idiocy about the charms of Paris in July ! At 
the same time I do not believe she cares a row 
of pins for Blakemore. And I can’t see why she 
should." 

Florence and Blakemore seemed to have arrived 
at a contrary conclusion in the course of the three 
90 


MANDERS 


weeks in which the young lady had contrived, despite 
a great amount of social excitement, more than once 
to make excursions of a restful character in Blake- 
more’s company free from the maternal surveillance. 
It is true these fruitful escapades were masked by 
the pretence of shopping, devotional pilgrimages, or 
any easy deception that would serve to answer Mrs 
Storey’s unsuspicious and too careless questions, but 
subtleties of this sort are elementary to forbidden 
friendships. The ethics of the situation did not 
trouble Blakemore, for the simple reason that they 
did not occur to him, it being his opinion that Mrs 
Storey was one of those irreconcilable dogmatists in 
the friendships of the sexes whom it is the duty of 
every purposeful young gentleman to oppose with 
artifice. Florence was equally free from pricks of 
conscience. The deceptions she practised upon her 
mother were, she thought, no more than the necessary 
diplomacies of a girl whose rightful independence of 
thought and action was capriciously abridged. She 
knew herself perfectly capable of governing her own 
conduct within the limits of discretion as she under- 
stood discretion, and did not admit the right of 
foreign prejudices to place a fretful restraint upon 
the “ sensible liberties of our American system, which 
recognises woman as an intelligent and responsible 
being.” 

Their first adventure together was a drive to one 
of the environs, to which the greater part of the day 
was devoted. When Florence proposed it, Blakemore. 

91 


MANDERS 


with a momentary deference to Parisian convention, 
was for taking Mrs Storey with them. 

“ Nonsense ! ” Florence replied, with an emphasis 
that made Blakemore ashamed of his nice scruples. 
* I hate being chaperoned as if I were an invalid or 
an idiot. I think there is nothing so immoral as this 
odious European custom of branding every girl as a 
creature not fit to be trusted alone. Propriety ? There 
is no propriety about it ; it is downright indecency. 
It is an advertisement of society’s belief that a girl 
between the age of fifteen and matrimony is a 
natural reprobate longing for an abyss in which to 
fling herself. It is detestable. It makes my blood 
boil. I won’t submit to it. There is nothing would 
send me to Old Nick faster than a chaperon con- 
tinually prodding me in the back with maxims. If 
you have any wish to see me lead a respectable life, 
do help me to preserve my independence.” 

Assaulted in this determined fashion, Blakemore’s 
argumentative barriers were beaten into particles, 
and he made an unconditional surrender to every 
sprightly whim of a girl whose self-assured spirit 
had in it so many elements of dangerous fascination. 
Further experience convinced him that Florence had 
made a sufficiently thorough diagnosis of the half- 
dozen motives to human conduct to be fortified 
against surprise in any direction, and that the course 
of action to which she might commit herself would be 
deliberately chosen. The question he began to ask 
himself was whether her choice would be love or 
92 


MANDERS 


ambition ; and the egotism which is the reservoir of 
energy in every healthy mind determined him to 
educate her choice favourably to himself. He became 
so much engrossed in the self-imposed tutorage that 
he was not aware of the extent of Florence’s invasion 
of his own reserve until it was nearly time to return 
to the Avenue Marceau from the last of their stolen 
outings. Then he learned from the turbulence in his 
breast how recklessly he had played the pedagogue 
without taking account of the progress of his pupil. 

They were sitting on a bench below the fortifi- 
cations at the edge of the Bois de Vincennes, that 
grandfather of the parks of Paris so dear to the 
bourgeoisie and the holiday rabble. They had spent 
the morning on the banks of the Marne, one of the 
loveliest and most capricious rivers of France, where, 
in the soft days of the young summer, the artists and 
the dreamers went to find ravishing bits of shade and 
colour as they lounged on the turf beneath trees that 
overhung the water, busy mills, picturesque farm- 
houses, cosy vine-embowered cottages, and even a 
shepherdess here and there to quicken the scene that 
lends itself so charmingly to romance. They had 
rambled about and through the old chateau, now a 
garrison, in which the ghosts of royal history still 
keep their revels or repeat to the imagination the 
grim terrors of old tragedies like that of the Due 
d’Enghien, fusilladed in the dry moat; they had 
strolled along the little paths like aisles in the forest, 
once the haunt of deer and the wild boar preserved 
93 


M ANDERS 


for the royal hunt, hut now effeminated to childish 
recreations and promenades of the careless ; and they 
had come, on their way to the stand of the voitures , 
to this isolated rustic bench with just a ribbon of 
sunlight in the branches above it. 

“ And this is our last day together — alone ? ” asked 
Blakemore, as if there were any doubt of the fact. 

“ Unless you make up your mind to go to 
Switzerland with us,” she answered, her smile having 
something of a challenge in it. 

“ I can’t do that.” 

“No?” 

“No. I’m not a gentleman of leisure like Mr 
Mendenhall.” 

“ Really ? I have seen no evidence to the con- 
trary.” 

“ Ah ! That is true. You have made an idler of 
me.” 

“And you reproach me for it. That’s a man’s 
way.” 

“You know what I think about it. You know 
what these days with you have meant to me. You 
know what your going away means to me.” He took 
her hand as he spoke, but she laughingly drew it 
away and checked his movement toward her with an 
admonitory shake of the head. 

“ Now, you must not spoil the day by a splash of 
personal sentiment. I don’t want you to say some- 
thing that will sound foolish to you when you recall 
it after I am gone. You have kept your head so well 
94 


MANDERS 


in our little jaunts and frolics that I have quite a 
good opinion of your common sense. But what shall 
I think of you if you do as all the rest of them do ? ” 

“ But I am in earnest, Florence ! ” 

“So am I, Walter, as I shall prove to you by 
talking with what the story books would call un- 
maidenly frankness. You think you love me, don’t 
you?” 

“ I don’t think it, I know it,” he answered ardently, 
and seizing once more upon her hand, this time in a 
more secure grasp. 

“Very well, then, you know it,” she assented, 
making no effort to release her hand nor to prevent 
his kissing it. “Now, then, let us see what would 
be the consequences of a corresponding weakness on 
my part. You are an artist at the beginning of a 
career — ” 

“I’m a duffer with no prospect of a career,” he 
interrupted, promptly pushing aside the first obstacle. 

“ And do you think I would marry a ‘ duffer ’ ? ” she 
asked mischievously. “But you are not a ‘ duffer,’ 
and I am sure you have all the requisites of success, 
if you don’t make a fool of yourself by marrying 
some girl without an atom of sympathy in her 
make-up, and who would lead you a dance of 
despair.” 

“ You are not that sort of girl,” he urged stoutly. 

“But you have no business to marry at all,” she 
insisted, “until you have got up the hill where you 
won’t mind a weight being hung round your neck. 

95 


MANDERS 


Besides, I am not ready to think of becoming a 
bond-slave to a man yet — of being labelled as 
someone’s private property from which trespassers 
are warned. That amuses you, doesn’t it? Then I 
must tell you cold-bloodedly that the man I will 
consent to marry must offer me a substantial equiva- 
lent for my liberty. Love isn’t enough. That is the 
cheapest merchandise in the market. Money is but 
a little more considerable, for a very rich man may 
be a mere beast; besides, I shall have plenty of 
money. I should hesitate a long time before refus- 
ing a sounding title provided the creature that went 
with it were not intolerably odious. If it were a 
choice between these three things only I might be 
persuaded to make n initial experiment in love. 
But there is another consideration greater than 
these that I think embraces them all — I mean 
Fame, real fame, fame gained by the patient exer- 
cise of a commanding talent. I could adore a great 
man ; I haven’t much use for the other kind.” 

She said all this so good-humouredly that Blake- 
more was not dismayed by it. It rather gave him 
courage to set himself before her in the favourable 
light of one not unlikely to meet her requirements 
if she would give him time and a sustaining promise. 
Men became, he declared with unreasoning enthusi- 
asm, whatever women chose to make of them, so 
great was man’s need of an inspiring motive such 
as love for woman alone could give him. She 
listened to his ardent and insistent eloquence, 
96 


MANDERS 


smiling to note the increased confidence with 
which he rounded each uninterrupted period, but 
giving no sign that his words were other than 
vain beatings at her ears. He imagined that he 
had routed her pretended objections, and inter- 
preted her silence to suit his wishes, and was 
already beginning to have a sense of possession, 
when she said naively,— 

“These seem to be very well-rehearsed ideas of 
yours ; are you sure I am the first one to whom you 
have addressed this persuasive speech ? I wouldn’t 
be at all surprised if you had practised on that 
pretty Madame Manders. Confess, now.” 

“ Be serious, Florence ; don’t torment a fellow. 
Give me an honest answer. Will you ? ” 

“Yes, the honestest I have at hand. I like you 
as well as I like any man I know, perhaps a little 
better. I have let you buy me a lot of presents that 
I didn’t really want, and only one of two things 
could be inferred from that under ordinary condi- 
tions, either that I am your fiancee, or that I am a 
girl without — well, say principle. Now, I am neither 
the one nor the other — I am simply a young lady 
who claims the privilege of acting in accordance 
with her own ideas of right and wrong, and with- 
out caring a great deal for any notions Mrs Grundy 
may have on the subject. I meant pretty nearly all 
I said a while ago, but there is a modification or two. 
Perhaps if I were to fall in love with a man I should 

not stop to consider whether he were a fishmonger 

G 


MANDERS 


or a maharajah, hut would marry him at the first 
asking. But I’m not in love, and I don’t even 
recognise any symptomatic tendencies in that direc- 
tion. Wait, wait, wait! I’ll make a bargain with 
you. Why, you looked as if you were going into 
a temper ! I’ll make this bargain with you ; we will 
go our respective ways in a two years’ further experi- 
ment with life. If in the course of that time I get 
into an entanglement with anybody else, I’ll send 
these presents back to you ; if you find that your 
affection for me is merely a midsummer madness, 
and Paris madness at that, you will demand the 
return of your property; but if at the end of the 
two years we are still freebooters — well, we will 
meet somewhere and have another talk on this 
subject. Do you agree?” 

He laughed a little dubiously, having less assur- 
ance than before, and not quite certain just how he 
should understand the unorthodox utterance of this 
girl of twenty who talked like a disappointed widow. 
He fumbled in his waistcoat pocket and drew forth 
a tiny morocco case. 

“ I’ll agree if you will wear an engagement ring I 
have here.” 

“So you came prepared? You did take me for 
granted, didn’t you? You are a veritable country 
swain, an Augusta Evans sort of youth. Let me 
see it.” 

He opened the case and handed her the ring. She 
took it with an exclamation of pleasure. 

98 


MANDERS 


“I approve your taste’ It is very pretty — rich 
but not showy. Well, 111 wear it if you want me 
to — but not as an engagement ring. I detest engage- 
ments; they are too much like paying a deposit on 
goods to be called for. I don’t propose to give you 
or anyone the right to tyrannise over my conduct. 
Shall I wear it under those conditions?” 

“Under any conditions you please.” 

“It means absolutely nothing in the way of an 
engagement ? ” 

“ Absolutely nothing.” 

“ You would have no right to complain if I should 
marry Mr Mendenhall next week ? ” 

None whatever.” 

“Then I’ll put it on. Of course I allow you the 
same freedom that I claim for myself.” 

“Naturally.” 

There was a pause of some moments, Florence 
rearranging her rings to give the new one a becom- 
ing place, Blakemore nervously revolving an idea he 
thought appropriate to the occasion. 

At last he said hesitatingly, — 

“ There is generally a seal put upon a ceremony of 
this kind.” 

“ But, my dear Walter, we have distinctly declared 
that there is no ceremony about it.” She resolutely 
shook her head. “Come, the sun has gone down; 
I’ll barely get home in time to dress for dinner.” 

She rose as she spoke. Blakemore sprang to his 
feet. There was no one in view. He clasped her 
99 


MANDERS 


passionately in his arms and kissed her full on 
the lips. 

“ Well, you are impulsive ! ” she exclaimed, sur- 
prised by the suddenness of the attack, and pushing 
him from her. “ And really, do you know, I hadn’t 
noticed before that you have raised a moustache ? 
It’s rather becoming.” 

She stood regarding him at arm’s length for a 
moment, the amused smile on her lips taking the 
shadow of a seriousness in her eyes. 

"But a moustache is supposed to be a certificate 
that one has attained years of discretion, and I must 
request you to play no more schoolboy pranks with 
me. I think I rather admire reserve in a man. 
Keep your impulses from getting the better of you. 
You might fall out of my favour. There is an empty 
cab crawling along the road ; shall we take it ? ” 


CHAPTER VII 

After the departure of the Storeys, accompanied by 
Mr Mendenhall, Blakemore very gladly withdrew 
from the social dissipations of which he had been 
the too willing victim, vigorously declining the 
invitations, still numerous enough notwithstanding 
the end of the fashionable season. He applied 
himself to work with a diligence, both in the 
school and in the garden, that promised to make 
up the lost time. Not only increased zeal, but a 
new spirit also animated him. All the perplexities, 
the hindrances, the obtuseness of his three years 
persistence in the Monier academy suddenly re- 
solved themselves into nothingness, leaving him 
clear - visioned, perceptive, competently executive. 
The sureness with which he now applied principles 
which M. Monier had despaired of teaching him gave 
the master a gratifying surprise, and bewildered the 
students, who knew so much less of these instant 
awakenings than did the old master, who had seen 
genius break its shell of dulness before this. Mil- 
som, in his irreverent way explaining the pheno- 
menon in Blakemore’s absence, declared — 


IOI 


MANDERS 


“The cuss hasn’t been loafing as we thought; he 
has been sneaking it in some other school.” 

“ That is true,” said old M. Monier, with a chuckle ; 
“the school of hearts.” 

But M. Monier was thinking of Marie. 

Marie made no attempt to conceal the delight 
with which the change in Blakemore filled her. 
She knew well enough to what it was attributable, 
and was grateful to the American girl ; it made 
small difference to her what had brought about a 
result so admirable. She was conscious of no other 
feeling than sincere pleasure that the “ creation ” was 
going on, going on well, and that Blakemore was 
getting the habit of humming fragments of song 
by way of approving his work when he paused to 
inspect it. Her heart sang songs, too, and she 
accounted to herself for these bubblings of happi- 
ness by saying, “He is going to arrive some day. 
He is going to be a great artist after all. And I, 
too, am helping him ! ” Manders came in for his 
share of her raptures — raptures that demanded an 
outward expansion. 

“ You like M .Blakemore very, very much, do you 
not, cheri?” 

“Yes, I like M. Bla’mo’. But I call him M. 
Walter, now.” 

“And you are right, cheri,” hugging him as if 
by that means to confirm the privilege; “and M. 
Walter is so much nicer than M. Blakemore, eh, 
mon enfant ?” 


102 


MANDERS 


“ It is easier to say,” assented Manders, unemo- 
tionally. 

“But you like M. Walter himself more than 
you used to like M. Blakemore, do you not?” 

“You are a funny maman, I think. Don’t you 
know it is the same thing? M. Walter and M. 
Bla’mo’ are both one; how am I able to like one 
better than the other?” 

No cleverness of speech could have amused her 
more. Manders was laughing at her, she saw plainly. 
She had learned to interpret that extra stolidity of 
countenance with which he masked his lapses into 
humorousness. But she liked being laughed at by 
Manders. She thought it so wise in him. 

“ You are right ; how, indeed ! ” 

She gave him a final caress, that ended in a playful 
pull at his ear and a ruffling of his curls, for Marie 
had no doubt whatever of the nature of Manders’ 
feeling for Blakemore. If she had only understood 
herself half as well, she might have distrusted this 
exuberance of happiness. There is nothing quite so 
dangerous among the casualties of life as the careless 
joy of a generous heart. Selfishness is the moral 
preservative. Marie had not enough selfishness for 
the simplest demands of self-protection where her 
affections were engaged. And what matter ? After 
all, we aphides on the leaves of time vex our precious 
brains overmuch with the machinery of the universe, 
which goes on grinding planets to powder, mindless to 
the fact that a myriad of us perish with every throb 


MANDERS 


of the stupendous engines. What if an aphis find 
the tip of a rose leaf sweetened in the sun a 
whole world of contentment ? Why should the aphis 
quarrel with the stars ? Better to go on drinking 
the refreshing juices of the plant while the sun 
permits it to be green. That would have been Marie’s 
conclusion if she had thought about the problem 
at all. 

Stopping to dine with Blakemore was becoming 
the evening habit of Marie and Manders now. Some- 
times after the dinner there was music, for Blake- 
more was a virtuoso of the ’cello, and under his 
instruction Marie began to play accompaniments 
with a fair degree of merit in the performance. 
They sang together also, and whether they played or 
sang, Manders would sit in rapt attention, his fancies 
bearing him into such far reaches of wonder -glowing 
regions that the sudden coming back when the music 
ceased was a pain to him, and he took tears with him 
into the street for the home-going. Under these 
influences, Manders began a curious development, a 
nervous quickening which both Marie and Blakemore 
set down to the credit of his mornings in the Ecole 
Alsacienne. “ He is learning rapidly,” they said, but 
the knowledge coming to him was not of the things 
gathered drily into school-books. There are other 
islands than Patmos, and other seers than John, and 
the heavens may part as a scroll that is rolled 
together for the eyes of a little child. What else 
meant that confession to Marie as they walked home 
104 


MANDERS 


one night when she teased him affectionately about 
his tears and his silence ? What was the matter ? 
she asked. Should they have no more of the music 
that disturbed him so much ? 

He answered her almost fiercely, vehemently pro- 
testing against what he declared to be a wicked, 
wicked thought. He frightened her with the pas- 
sionate incoherence of his rebellion against the idea 
she had playfully suggested. She soothed him with 
genuine penitence, and with the ardour of her own 
sympathies coaxed him into confidences that much 
perplexed her. He talked excitedly, with an 
astonishing flow of words, gesticulating in a way 
unusual with him, finally pushing her toward a 
bench on which they sat in the starlight as he 
continued impetuously, — 

“ Do you know where I was to-night ? In a great 
house filled with ever so many people, more than I 
ever saw before ! Lights brighter than that,” point- 
ing to a street light, “ everywhere ! And the people 
were wonderfully dressed — all white and shining, and 
so happy ! And I was on a great platform in a sort 
of room all alone ! But I wasn’t little, I was a man, 
and I was singing, and there were men down below 
me playing on all kinds of instruments such as you 
never saw ! And while I was singing the music 
stopped and a great noise arose, all the people in the 
crowd making it with their hands and their voices ! 
and all of them looking at me and smiling ! but some 
of them were crying, too. They made so much noise 
105 


MANDERS 


that I stopped singing, for I couldn’t hear myself 
singing ! and then — and then the lights all went out ! 
Ah! why did the lights go out to leave me sitting 
in M. Walter’s room crying?” 

A superstitious awe came upon Marie with the 
recital. She could only murmur some words 
of endearment and hurry Manders home, com- 
forting him with the repeated assurance that 
she was a very naughty maman to have teased 
him. 

She faithfully reported the incident to Blake- 
more the next afternoon, adding, in a flutter of 
eagerness, to convince him that it was all very 
.curious, — 

“And you know he has never been in a theatre, 
so he was not remembering something he had seen 
really ! ” 

“I’ll tell you what we’ll have to do, Marie, we’ll 
have to teach Manders music. He has it in him; 
we’ll bring it out.” 

Marie put out her hand gratefully, with the light 
laughter of a gratified child, exclaiming, — 

“How good you are, Walter! You are like the 
fairies who bring the flowers and the sunshine and 
the soft rains — you make everyone happy.” Then 
after a moment her face clouded. “But I don’t 
know enough to teach him, and you cannot spare 
the time.” 

“Never mind,” he answered, striking his finger 
lightly against her dimpled chin, “he shall have a 
106 


MANDERS 


teacher who shall come here while you are posing, 
and we’ll take an hour of playtime away from him. 
He won’t mind that.” 

“ Oh ! he will be so happy ! and I — I’ll be so happy, 
too ! ” 


CHAPTER VIII 

Blakemore, having made careful inquiry among 
his friends, got the address of a Miss Warley, the 
daughter of an English officer retired on half-pay 
who had come with his family to live in Paris for 
economic reasons. He had a son at Harrow, and 
the daughter, recommended as a thorough musician, 
helped out the slender resources by giving a few 
lessons in a strictly private way. Miss Warley called 
by appointment at Blakemore’s apartments, accom- 
panied by the captain — an un warlike, amiable gentle- 
man, who was at nice pains to impress Blakemore 
with the fact that the necessity to earn one’s daily 
bread was not incompatible with gentility and the 
traditions of a family that had excellent reasons for 
holding its head respectably high. He made lead- 
ing inquiries about the prospective pupil, and in 
answer to one of these Blakemore betrayed the fact 
that Madame Manders was a professional model. 

Instantly, as if operated by a common spring, 
the captain and Miss Warley rose to their feet, 
their affable smiles disappearing behind an aspect of 
offended yet polite dignity. 

“In that case — ” the captain began, giving his 
108 


MANDERS 


cane a definitive thrust against the floor, at the 
same time crooking his elbow in a formal invitation 
to the cotton-gloved hand of his daughter, “ I think 
we need take up no more of your time, sir.” 

Blakemore hastened to interpose some pacifying 
explanations. Madame Manders was a woman of the 
most exemplary character, and not at all a model in 
the ordinary sense of the word. Besides, the captain 
doubtless knew the family to which Madame Manders 
had the honour to belong, as it was the venerable 
and aristocratic Kentish family whose great wealth 
was its least proud distinction. It was true that 
the late Mr Edward Manders had fallen under the 
disfavour of his family and died estranged from them, 
hut that did not in the least detract from the respect- 
ability of his son. As for Madame Manders herself, 
“ You yourself said but a moment ago, Captain 
Warley, that the necessity of earning one’s livelihood 
is not incompatible with gentility. Madame Manders 
follows honourably an honourable vocation, a neces- 
sary vocation if art is to have its noblest expression ; 
and I think, sir, we owe it to art and humanity to 
make the profession of the model as respectable 
at least as the models themselves are willing to 
have it.” 

Captain Warley and his daughter exchanged 
glances. The captain cleared his throat and released 
a button of his coat. Miss Warley withdrew her 
hand from her father’s arm. There was a moment 
of silence, during which Blakemore stood expectant. 

IOQ 


MANDERS 


“ Well, Captain Warley ? ” 

“Well, daughter?” asked the captain, a little 
doubtfully. 

“As you please, father,” replied the young lady, with 
the air of one resigned to an alternative. Blakemore 
thought Miss Warley of an age and a plainness quite 
equal to the guardianship of her austere virtue. 

“Well, my dear, perhaps Mr Blakemore is right. 
There is no reason why we should not be as charit- 
able as our neighbours, and I daresay the boy will 
not be any the less musical because his mother is a 
model. We may as well make the experiment.” 

So the music lessons began, Miss Warley coming 
three times a week, to the intense happiness of the 
eager Manders, and presently to her own satisfac- 
tion, for she told her father that the boy was a 
prodigy so easy to teach that he even anticipated 
instruction. 

The summer passed, and the autumn was drifting 
away from its purple and golden-leafed splendour 
into the grey nakedness of the early winter. Blake- 
more was well along with his second picture, one 
he intended to submit to the next year’s salon, it 
offered so much in character and “ quality.” Letters 
from Miss Storey in St Petersburg announced the 
intention of Mrs Storey to pass the winter in Rome 
and the southern parts of Italy, and Blakemore had 
in mind a plan to join them to make some study of 
the Italian masters as the final throwing off of the 
student’s beret before entering formally the respon- 

IIO 


MANDERS 


sible life of the veritable artist. Manders had 
already advanced to the triumphant stage of “ read- 
ing music,” though Miss Warley, with a sensibleness 
not common to her class, bewailed the fact that she 
could not “ keep him back enough. He reads so well 
that he wants to go at pieces I am not ready to have 
him take.” And she distressed herself, too, over the 
passion he had for singing. 

“ But he has a sweet voice,” Blakemore laughingly 
objected. “I love to hear it.” 

“ Of course you do,” Miss Warley assented, in the 
tone she would have used to rebuke a misdemeanour. 
“And so do I. That is the very reason he should 
not be allowed to open his mouth for at least ten 
years.” 

But he only sang the songs Marie was used to sing, 
little songs a linnet might have piped from the 
hedge; and most of all the one he wept to hear 
when it first came to him in his mother’s winningly 
melodious but untrained voice, — 

If the light should go and the roses fade, 

And earth grow cold and the birds not sing. 

But Marie had never sung it so. Marie’s soul only 
sunned itself in the shallows of emotion. 

One day Manders came listless from the school to 
his music lesson. He sat inert at the piano, going 
through his task in such a lifeless, perfunctory way 
that Miss Warley chided him rather sharply for an 
indolence that surprised her. Blakemore, painting 
hi 


MANDERS 


in the garden, was saying to Marie, “ A few more 
days and we’ll call this done,” Marie smiling con- 
tent, when Miss Warley came to the salon door and 
called to Blakemore. 

“I’m afraid Manders is going to he ill,” she said 
anxiously, as Blakemore came to her. Marie heard, 
her heart hounding with a great fear as she ran 
forward, white - faced and trembling. She was 
heside the corner divan, where Manders lay with 
closed eyes, before the others. She took his hands, 
covering them and his cheeks with kisses as she 
breathed out her fearful endearments, blaming him 
for trying to frighten her. Manders smiled, and 
put his arm about her neck. 

“I'm just sleepy, maman; that is all,” he said. 

But it was not all, as the doctor, who came an hour 
later, told them. “Typhus/ he said to Blakemore, 
and forbade the child’s removal from the house. 
Blakemore gave up his own room, a large and airy 
one, to Manders and Marie, and prepared, with 
Fanchette’s help, a sommier for himself in the 
studio. After a night or two a nurse came in, and 
the dressing-room was made to serve Marie’s pur- 
pose, the door opening into the room where Manders 
burned in his music-haunted delirium. 

Mother Pugens brought such things as were re- 
quired from Marie’s rooms in the Rue St Jacques, 
and evinced so great a solicitude to be helpful that 
now and then she was allowed to sit in the sick-room 
for an hour or two, watching and serving the “ pauvre 

II 2 


MANDERS 


petit ” she had brought into the world, as she assured 
the nurse a thousand times. 

The case did not turn out as bad as the doctor 
feared it would. 

“ It is only typhoid,” he cheerily informed Blake- 
more one morning, without making it clear just how 
many degrees of favourable difference were reckoned 
between a disease and its likeness, but his tone and 
manner persuaded Blakemore that the difference was 
worth a thank-offering. And Manders, too, was a 
stout lad, showing, with his curls shorn away, 
even manlier on his pillow than he had in the 
activities of health, so that there was a visible 
something to substantiate the medical man’s opinion 
that the lad would be “ pulled through with colours 
flying.” 

Pull him through they did, though they were five 
weeks in the doing. There were dancing feathers 
of snow in the keen air when Manders — the nurse 
and the doctor dismissed a week before — came down 
into the warm, fire- flushed salon for the first after- 
noon jubilee over his convalescence. Manders was 
enthroned upon cushions, and from every advan- 
tageous place and corner fresh flowers and green 
plants sent him greetings, to which his smiles 
made answer. A merry-making, indeed, with Miss 
Warley and the captain coming in for a part of 
it. 

“I should have brought Mrs Warley along,” said 
the captain, semi-confidential ly, to Blakemore, “but 
H 


MANDERS 


really she wasn’t equal to the exertion.” Then, in 
a lower tone still, he added, “Peculiar woman, Mrs 
Warley; most estimable, but peculiar. Proud, Mr 
Blakemore, proud as Lucifer. It is style or nothing 
with Mrs Warley, so we quit London to live among 
these jabbering barbarians for pride’s sake, Mr Blake- 
more. Ah ! well, sir, a man who has been one of 
Her Majesty’s officers owes something to his family. 
Sacrifices are salt for the best of us, Mr Blakemore — 
but one doesn’t want to become too salty.” 

The captain laughed heartily at this little joke. It 
was a favourite with him, because it always sent his 
spirit up where numberless good things were stored 
for repetition ; and once well started, the captain was 
no end of a jolly fellow. Manders found him im- 
mensely amusing, he had so many droll stories of 
army life, of which he made himself the victim. 
Anecdotes at the expense of the narrator are so 
much more comical than others, that the captain did 
not hesitate to reverse the order of facts if by so 
doing he could produce a more resonant explosion of 
mirth. Manders rewarded the captain prodigally, and 
the others were so ready with their small pence of 
chuckles and titterings that the sunny old war-dog 
was encouraged to monopolise the occasion, and- was 
inclined to resent it as an infringement of personal 
privilege when Miss Warley arose with the remark 
that it was time for them to go. He flourished his 
hand with an airy gaiety and declared there was 
plenty of time, protesting that his best stories were 

114 


MANDERS 


to come. He was willing to accept Blakemore’s 
invitation to dinner. 

“You know what mother will say if we are late to 
our dinner,” Miss Warley reminded him, smiling, and 
giving an eloquent side inclination to her head. 

“Ah! Mr Blakemore,” said the captain, in mock 
dolour as he reluctantly got to his feet, “ I used to be 
foolish enough to pity a galley slave. But being 
chained to the rowlocks is freedom — freedom, Mr 
Blakemore — compared with the tyranny of a six- 
o’clock dinner, served in one course. Well, come 
along, Matilda, since we must be slaves.” 

Though he felt some slight reaction after the 
captain had gone, Manders was by no means ready 
to retire to his room. He insisted on having his light 
dinner at the table with Blakemore and Marie, and 
afterward there must be some music, it had been so 
long since he had heard any. When at last he con- 
fessed himself tired and sleepy, Blakemore carried 
him up the few steps that led to the half floor where 
were the studio and sleeping-rooms, and Marie put 
him to bed. 

“ Don’t stop the music,” he pleaded, after he had 
been tucked into his bed. “I should love to go to 
g leep with the music in my ears.” 

Fanchette closed up the house and went up to 
her place in the attic while they were playing and 
singing together. Some strange spell was in the 
music to-night. There were whispers and touches 
and soft, seductive laughter in the air, a mysterious 
”5 


MANDERS 


breath from the flowers, and an eerie murmur in 
mischievous winds beating lightly at the casements. 
Once Marie looked from the piano at Blakemore, 
who was playing the ’cello absently, his eyes in- 
tently fixed on her. 

“You are not playing in time with me,” she said 
laughingly. 

“ I wasn’t thinkiug,” said Blakemore, hurriedly, 
drawing the ’cello closer between his knees. “Let 
us begin again.” 

She turned back a page, and felt her cheeks flush, 
wondering what caused it; and her fingers seemed 
to touch the keys tremulously as she played, falter- 
ing presently and striking false notes. She stopped 
at length, saying, as she smiled half-apologetically, 
half-shyly, — 

“I don’t believe I can play any more.” 

“You are tired,” he said, placing the ’cello in the 
corner against the piano. 

“No," I don’t feel tired,” she answered. 

“ Nervous, perhaps.” 

“You know I haven’t any nerves,” she smiled. 
“I think it is happiness. Happiness is very dis- 
turbing sometimes, isn’t it?” 

“Yes,” he assented, something like a sigh in his 
voice, yet something of eagerness too. “There is 
nothing so disturbing as happiness, sometimes. Why 
do you feel so happy ? ” 

“Because Manders is well again, I suppose. 
Doesn’t that make you happy too ? ” 


MANDERS 


“Yes, that makes me happy too.” 

He stood beside her. A lock of her hair, slipped 
from the coil, curled forward along her neck. He 
took it between his fingers, but with a little laugh 
she pulled away from him and tucked it in place 
again, saying that was a sign of bedtime. It 
seemed to him that she had never been so pretty. 

“Isn’t it getting late?” she asked. 

“Not yet eleven,” he answered, looking at his 
watch. 

“ Oh ! but that is late 1 for us, nowadays, you 
know.” 

They lighted their candles and turned out the 
salon lights, going up the steps together. He 
went in with her to look at Manders, who slept 
soundly, a smile on his lips, one hand just above 
the cover holding the rose he had taken to bed 
with him. 

They stood regarding the child for a moment, 
Blakemore with his hand on Marie’s shoulder. She 
looked up into the face above her, whispering, — 

“ Is he not beautiful ? ” 

Blakemore drew her a little toward the door, then 
paused irresolutely. He held out his hand to her. 

“ Good-night ! ” he said, in a low tone. 

“ Good-night ! ” she responded, putting her hand in 
his. He held her hand, making no movement to go. 
His clasp seemed feverish to her. She looked at him 
inquiringly. He was strange to her to-night. 

“ What is it ? ” she asked. 

117 


MANDERS 


He made no response, but, still holding her hand, 
he led the way across the hall to the studio door. 
He paused after taking hold of the knob. 

“Are you sleepy?” he asked, as if seeking an 
excuse for himself. 

“No,” she said. “Why? Are you going to work 
at this hour ? ” 

“No; I want to talk to you,” he said heavily. 

They entered the studio, he closing the door behind 
them. 

An hour later Manders cried out in his sleep — a 
cry of terror. 

“ Maman ! ” 

Marie heard him, and, frightened, came running 
from the studio, a robe caught hastily around her 
shoulders. 

She flung herself upon her knees at the bedside 
of the sleeping child, her tears raining upon his 
face. 

“ Oh, forgive me, Edouard, my little one ! Forgive 
me ! forgive me ! ” she sobbed, reaching to press his 
cheek with her hand. The child awoke, knew her, 
and put out an arm to clasp her neck. 

“Oh, maman,” he exclaimed, “I have had such a 
dream ! A great river was bearing you away from 
me — a great, swift river, and you were in the midst 
of it! But I ran along on the side calling to you, 
and I knew you must hear me and come back ! It 
was a foolish dream, was it not, maman ? ” 

But Marie wept for the realness of the dream. 

118 


CHAPTER IX 


Blakemoke came down to his coffee in a travelling 
suit next morning, and bearing a hand-bag. 

“ Is monsieur going away ? ” asked F anchette, 
marked disapproval in her tone. She was accus- 
tomed to forewarning of these goings, and she thought 
coffee and rolls an insufficient foundation for a rail- 
way journey, however short. 

“Yes; I am going to London for three or four 
days. Send the concierge for a fiacre” 

“ But shall I fry an egg for monsieur ? or make an 
omelette ? It is very indiscreet to tempt Providence 
with an empty stomach when one journeys by train, 
but to go to sea that way is unheard of, monsieur.” 

“I shall breakfast at Calais, Fanchette. I want 
nothing now.” 

Fanchette started, grumbling, toward the door to 
order the cab. As she was going out, Blakemore 
called to her, — 

“ Have you seen madame this morning ? ” 

“In her room, monsieur. She had me serve her 
coffee there.” Then, coming nearer to him and speak- 
ing in a tone of querulous concern, she added, — 

119 


MANDERS 


“ I don’t believe the poor dear remembered to put 
herself to bed at all last night. Her bed had not been 
touched, and I found her on the floor with her head 
on the little one’s bed. It is all very well, monsieur, 
for mothers to be happy when their little ones get well 
after a battle with death, but when it comes to — ” 
“ Never mind, Fanchette, do as I bade you.” 
Fanchette became suspicious of her ears. It was 
something new for Monsieur Blakemore to speak 
irritably — but to lapse from compassion at the same 
time ! The old domestic stared at him. She had not 
heard aright. 

“ Monsieur has said — ? ” 

“ Send the concierge for the fiacre” 

Fanchette went out bewildered. 

When, at the end of a quarter of an hour she 
returned, to say that the cab was waiting, Blakemore 
handed her a note. 

“ Give that to madame,” he said, rather more 
gently than he had spoken before, Fanchette thought, 
“ and you are to take orders from her in my absence. 
I’ll be back before the end of the week.” 

He went out, carrying the bag, and Fanchette 
followed him to the pavement, vainly ransacking 
her feeble old brain for some reasonable explanation 
of the master’s unwonted behaviour. 

Marie kept her room until the afternoon and then 
came down into the salon with Manders, and seemed 
to cling to the child as if she were the one in need of 
comforting and reviving attention. She demanded 


120 


MANDERS 


of fclie child a thousand reassurances of his love for 
her. She seemed fearful of being a moment beyond 
touch of him, and if he fell into one of the grave 
reveries so habitual with him, she interpreted his 
silence into a reproach, and with an extravagance of 
half-tearful follies won him back to babbling tender- 
ness. When he stroked his hand over her face 
and called her “good little maman” in a quaintly 
patronising way, she overwhelmed him with grateful 
caresses, smiling at him through tears that she told 
him were only the words of happiness which her 
tongue didn’t know how to speak. 

“ My heart is so full, Edouard, that it would burst 
if I couldn’t cry a little — full of love for you, 
dearie ! There isn’t anything there but love, dearie \ 
There isn’t room for anything else. You couldn’t 
think me wicked, could you, little one ? You 
wouldn’t believe that I could be wicked ! Eh, my 
child ? You couldn’t believe it if I should tell you so 
myself ! Could you, dearie ? Could you, could you, 
little one ? ” 

He laughed, and struck her cheek with his open 
hand, playfully punishing her. 

“ Que tu es bete ! ” was his reply. “ One must not 
cry when one is happy ; that is for the sad to do. 
I will not have my pretty maman’s eyes like fish 
ponds.” He dried away her tears with the ends of 
the silk scarf loosely knotted at her throat, amused 
by the performance, telling her it served her right 

if he had spoiled her finery. 

121 


MANDERS 


He wished her to sing for him. Not to-day, she 
said. And so the next day, and the day following, 
and the day after that. Then a letter came for 
Blakemore, postmarked Florence, the superscription 
having that angular irregularity which Marie had 
already learned to identify with Miss Storey’s writing. 
Several letters addressed in this way had come in the 
course of the past six months, one or two while 
Manders was ill, and Marie had felt no sort of interest 
in them, save for the pleasure Blakemore seemed 
to get from reading them. But she held this one 
long in her hand, her eyes studying the address 
through a mist of tears, as if some vital import were 
in each separate letter. She put it on the table at 
last, address downward, and placed beside it a small 
vase, in the slender stem of which she put a single 
rose, choosing a white one. She brushed the mist 
from her eyes with her finger tips, and though a sigh 
trembled from her lips, a smile that was hardly a 
smile came with it. Manders was half lying on the 
divan, looking at the pictures of a comic paper Miss 
Warley had brought him. Marie went to him, and 
pulling down the paper behind which his face was 
hidden, smiled at him. 

“ Shall I sing for you now ? ” she asked. 

“ Will you ? ” cried Manders, springing up. 

“ Yes.” 

She kissed him, but not in the impassioned way of 
these past few days, and went to the piano. Manders 
was too pleased to notice that there was something 
122 


MANDERS 


new, something strangely prophetic in the firmer 
tones of her voice to-night. 

“ You are the old maman again/’ he said approv- 
ingly, as they went up the stairs to bed. She made 
no response, knowing it otherwise. 

“ Sit down by me,” he urged, after he had got into 
bed. “ I want to tell you something.” 

She complied, sitting on the edge of the bed, 
holding one of his hands in hers. 

“ Do you know what I was thinking while you 
were singing ? That is what I am going to tell you ; 
but I’m sure I can’t tell you as it was. Isn’t it droll 
that you think so many things that you don’t know 
how to say ? It isn’t because I am little, is it ? You 
think things that way, too, don’t you, maman? 
I knew you did. I suppose God makes it that way 
on purpose. Don’t you ? Well, I was thinking that 
there was a little bird singing in a cage with the 
door open. And the little bird, singing all the time, 
would hop down to the door of its cage, and sit on 
the place that goes across under the door, you know, 
but it wouldn’t go out of the cage, though the trees 
were just beyond, with other birds calling among the 
branches. When I was listening I knew what the bird 
was singing, but I don’t remember it now. That is very 
funny, too, for I thought all the time how interesting 
it was. By-and-by the little bird went back to the 
swinging ring in the top of its cage, and then someone 
came and held up his hand before the door of the cage 
and coaxed the bird. But it went on singing and 
123 


MANDERS 


didn’t come down. Then the hand reached into the 
cage and took the bird, very gently. But it 
frightened the bird so that it stopped singing and 
crouched down in the hand, trembling, and with 
its mouth open. The hand held the bird for a long 
time; and the man talked to the bird, and put it 
against his cheek, and closed its little mouth with 
his lips, and the bird stopped trembling and was 
very still. Then the hand put the bird back into 
the cage, but it didn’t sing ; it just tucked its head 
down into its feathers, and sat still, very still. And 
do you know what I was thinking ? I was thinking 
what a pity it would be if the little bird never sang 
again. Don’t you think it would be a pity ? ” 

“ Yes, it would be a pity, dearie. I am sure the 
little bird will sing again. It will not do for the 
birds to stop singing ; the world needs all its music. 
Sleep, dearie, and dream that the little bird has sung.” 

In the morning there was a telegram from Blake- 
more, answer paid ; it asked the simple question, — 

“ Shall we go on with the picture ? ” 

Marie answered, “ Yes.” 

But after Fanchette had gone to the bureau with 
the message, Marie went up to her room and began 
getting Manders’s and her things in readiness to be 
carried back to the Rue St Jacques. Manders came 
in when the work was nearly done. 

“ What are you doing ? ” he asked, a look of dis- 
may coming into his face, for he saw very well what 
was doing. 


124 


MANDERS 


" Getting ready to go home,” she replied cheerily. 
“ Won’t you he glad to be in our own little place 
again ? ” 

“ No,” he answered conclusively, “ I am not ready 
to go. I like it better here ; besides, I’m not all well 
yet, and I need the piano.” 

Marie argued with him, using as persuasive allies 
of her imperfect reasoning a world of blandishments 
and caresses, for Manders was obstinately opposed 
to a course that seemed to him much too capricious. 
To her suggestion that they had no right to impose 
on Mr Blakemore’s kindness now that Manders was 
quite able to be about again, the lad retorted with 
liveliness, — 

“ M. Walter likes us very much. He likes to have 
us here ; and it isn’t right to go away and leave him 
when he isn’t here.” 

For a moment she hesitated, he was so deeply 
disturbed by the thought of quitting surroundings 
so much more delightful than any he remembered 
to have known. After all, was not her cup in the 
child’s hands ? Should she not drink of its waters 
for his sake, be they sweet or bitter to the taste ? 
Was not his happiness and well-being to be her chief 
consideration ? She had a dim perception of self- 
surrender as the victory of maternity, even if it had 
to do with sackcloth and ashes. There might have 
been an end to the packing, for she was saying to 
herself, “ It would be for Edouard’s sake. I must 
not take anything away from him.” But Manders, 
125 


MANDERS 


thinking he had triumphed over her, that she yielded 
to his will as always she had yielded, put his arm 
about her neck and said with quaintly patronising 
playfulness, — 

“ And you want to stay, too, don’t you ? For you 
love M. Walter just as much as I do, — is it not so, 
pretty maman ? ” 

She took his face between her two hands, looking 
into his eyes so pleadingly that he felt a fear as if 
in some way she needed his protection. 

“You love maman very much, do you not, my 
dearie ? Better than you love anyone else in all 
the world ? ” 

“ You know I do ! ” he cried ; “ better than all the 
world ! ” 

“ It is for my sake, then, that I would go back to 
our own little place. Shall we go, my child ? ” 

“ Come, let us go now, maman ! ” 

Blakemore returned the next evening. He had 
gone away in a somewhat Quixotic spirit, inspired 
by the possibly fallacious theory that certain pro- 
blems work out best when left to themselves. Once 
in London, with no definite object to occupy his 
attention, he began to reproach himself with hav- 
ing taken the most cowardly course open to him. 
He had not thought of his action in that light. 
It is probable he would have taken the next train 
back had he not met Mr Mendenhall in a theatre 
lobby between the acts of the play. They went 
up to the smoking-room and sat on one of the 
126 


MANDERS 


lounges, willing to miss an act of a familiar 
tragedy. Mr Mendenhall had gone to Russia with 
the Storeys, but had been compelled to return to 
England just as they were starting for Italy. He 
had half promised to rejoin them in Rome, and 
keenly regretted that family affairs were keeping 
him in London at a time when the town was so 
beastly dull and the weather so nasty. Mr Menden- 
hall was clearly in ignorance of the fact that Blake- 
more had any claim upon the special consideration of 
Miss Storey, of whom he spoke in terms of such easy 
familiarity as to convince Blakemore that Mrs Storey 
at least had been zealous to give definite colour to the 
friendship. 

“You know they have been in Venice for the past 
three weeks and have just gone to Florence.” 

No, Blakemore did not know it, and he secretly 
rebelled against the better information of this well- 
appearing gentleman, who complacently sipped his 
wine with such an air of unconscious superiority. 

“Yes, I have been invited to join them in Italy,” he 
said equivocally. 

“ Perhaps we can go together, if you are not going 
immediately. Have you fixed on a time ? ” 

“No, not definitely.” Indeed, he had not very 
seriously considered the matter. He had intended 
keeping at work until his picture should be finished. 
Though he had not been idle in other matters, the six 
weeks’ interruption of a zealous particular ambition 
made a serious difference with him. The complet- 
127 


MANDERS 


ing of the painting was problematic, now that days 
with the necessary sunshine were to be few and 
uncertain. He had an eagerness to tell Florence 
that the thing was done and well done, too. He 
felt that this was in some manner vital to his 
relations with her. But his mind entertained a 
disturbing premonition on Marie’s account. tie 
fancied, without having clearly reasoned the ques- 
tion, that she might not care to pose for him any 
more. Women, he thought, have an awkward way 
of making unreasonable decisions at inopportune 
times. But would such a decision on her part be 
altogether unreasonable ? 

“ I think I could get away in a fortnight,” said 
Mendenhall, breaking in upon Blakemore’s thoughts. 
“ How would that suit you ? ” 

“ I’ll tell you in a day or two. I’ll have to write 
to Paris. You see I am in the midst of some work 
that I ought to finish,” he said, half-apologetic- 
ally, thinking of his quandary. 

He began a letter to Marie the next day, but was 
dissatisfied with the wording of it. He was not in the 
mood, and he wasted several days without getting 
into the mood. London is not without its diversions 
for an idle man. At last he took refuge from the 
perplexities of composition in the convenience of the 
telegraph, and wired his question to Marie. Her 
prompt affirmative reply caused a revulsion of his 
sentiments, such is the fatuity of man’s moral nature. 
He had felt that he owed reparation to Marie in a 
128 


MANDERS 


self-devoted sort of way. He had arraigned himself 
before a stern judgment, that found him culpable 
without extenuating circumstances ; but now, with 
this submissive telegram in his hand, he began to 
persuade himself that an offence so readily condoned 
was not an offence at all, that he had given undue 
importance to a commonplace incident, and he con- 
cluded with a sense of disappointment that there 
was really nothing to prevent his going to Italy as 
soon as Mr Mendenhall pleased. He sent a note to 
that effect to Mendenhall’s club, and booked for the 
morning express. 

It was in this restored and philosophical peace of 
mind that he returned to Paris, and drove to the 
Rue Denfert-Rochereau, prepared for an indulgent if 
tearful welcome. He let himself into the house, and 
found old Fanchette pottering about the rooms in a 
final supervision before taking herself off to bed. He 
asked for Marie. 

“Ah, la! Madame has been gone these thirty 
hours. Bundled up to the last shred and ran away 
as soon as she thought monsieur was coming. Mon 
JDieu ! I haven’t an idea why. It was not the way 
we did in the days when I was worth a sweetheart. 
You wouldn’t have caught me running away from 
Antoine, I can tell you ! I always took my mass 
with a pinch of the devil, and I’m sixty-eight if I 
have lived a minute — and I hope monsieur does not 
think that my bones creak yet.” 

Marie gone made a difference in his reflections. 


MANDERS 


He rather resented being cheated of the opportunity 
to go through with the scene he had rehearsed in the 
cab on the way from the station. He had pictured 
himself in the flattering attitude of a consoling 
guardian, but this unforeseen stratagem, for so he 
regarded it, at once disconcerted and irritated him, 
throwing him again on the defensive, and at a dis- 
advantage. He sat down to a bite of something to 
eat with a sense of injury done him, and his reflec- 
tions were not simplified when he discovered Miss 
Storey’s letter, left face downward on the salon card- 
table, with a withered rose sentry-like above it. He 
fumbled with the letter some moments, turning it 
over and over, restrained from opening it by an 
annoying sense of unworthiness, and finally put it in 
his pocket without breaking the seal. He took the 
rose from the vase, some of its petals falling as he did 
so, smelled of it, found it unfragrant, made a movement 
to throw it into the fire, and then impulsively thrust 
it into the pocket with the letter. The imbecility of 
this action struck him and he laughed at himself, but 
he left the rose leaves where they were. It had been 
his habit w T hen restless or troubled to comfort him- 
self with his ’cello. He reached for the instrument, 
and, turning off the gas, began playing in the fire- 
light. Soon he drifted unconsciously into the ballet 
music of Gluck’s “ Orphee,” one of the most ex- 
quisite gems of elegy in the range of passionate 
music, a veritable balsam to melancholy. The 

strains entered into his soul and possessed it. The 
130 


MANDERS 


notes took words, and he seemed to hear Orpheus 
singing : — 

“ O toi, doux objet de ma flamme, 

Toi seule y peux calmer le trouble de mon ame ! ” 

He stopped in the midst of his playing, put on his 
hat and coat, and went out, following the winding 
way to the apartment in the Rue St Jacques. The 
concierge had not yet closed the door, and he mounted 
without question to Maries etage. He pulled the 
bell-rope and waited. Presently Marie came and 
spoke through the closed door. 

“ Who is there ? ” 

“ It is I — Walter.” 

There was a moment’s silence, and he took hold of 
the knob expectantly. 

“ I cannot see you to-night,” she said then quietly. 

“ But I must speak with you ! I have something 
to say to you ! ” he urged. 

“ Come in the morning. Good-night ! ” 

He heard her retiring footsteps, and tapped on the 
panel, pleading for just a word ; but an inner door 
closed, and he knew that Marie had shut herself into 
the room where she and Manders slept. 


CHAPTER X 


Mother Pugens, taught by varied experience and a 
certain shrewdness of observation to measure and 
weigh practical values with worldly accuracy, did not 
by any means approve Marie’s flouting of Providence 
in the guise of fortune. Her tenet of being was to 
“ take the goods the gods provide ye ” without argu- 
ment, a doctrine of belief neither original with nor 
confined to Mother Pugens and her class. In her 
opinion, as in that of others who have found that 
scruples of conscience but poorly offset ease of circum- 
stances, fine gold was much more to be desired than 
the judgments of the Lord, an opinion she fortified 
with the excellent proverb that a bird in the hand is 
more precious than several in the bush. She had con- 
templated with many approving nods of the head, and 
some sound, if homely, scraps of philosophy, what she 
believed to be Marie’s progressive steps in wisdom, 
for of course Mother Pugens had not been credulous 
enough to think the recent menage in the Rue 
Denfert-Rochereau a study in Platonism. It was 
therefore something much akin to chagrin that 
oppressed her spirit when Marie and Manders came 
trooping back, bag and baggage, to the miserable 


MANDERS 


conditions, comparatively speaking, of the Rue St 
Jacques. Dismay and solicitude expressed themselves 
in all the convolutions of her generous person, and it 
is only proper to say that she had a genuine sense 
of compassion for the folly which could so blind 
itself to opportunity. She renewed with enlarge- 
ments the wholesome advice she had given Mane in 
the first days of her widowhood, only her advice now 
took the form of remonstrance. It was a thing 
greatly to be censured that a young woman, with her 
own and a child’s future to think of, should de- 
liberately throw away the advantages she had been 
lucky enough to secure. 

“For my part, I don’t know what you can be 
thinking of ! You are much to blame, my dear, for 
snatching the bread out of your boy’s mouth, to say 
nothing of tearing the clothes off your own back. 
Fruit does not always hang on the branches that are 
right within reach, let me tell you. I’ll not deny 
that a pretty young thing like you may find apples 
for the picking ; but my girl Lizette knew very well 
what she was talking about when she said it is not 
wise to let go of one thing until you have got your 
other hand on something better. Young people will 
have their quarrels, my dear, but don’t be a fool. 
Make up your difference with a good grace, say I, 
and let the Old Nick get the worst of it. Take a 
friend’s advice, my dear — go back before he knows 
you have run away.” 

Marie made no offer to interrupt. She shrunk 
133 


MANDERS 


into silence under the consciousness that she had 
abandoned the right to rebuke Mother Pugens or 
to recoil from comparison with Lizette. When, how- 
ever, the old woman, believing that she had made an 
irresistible plea, asked beamingly, — 

“ Well, what do you say, my dear ? ” 

Marie answered, — 

“ There has been no quarrel, Mother Pugens. 
There has been nothing to quarrel about. Edouard 
was sick, and I stayed where I could care for him. 
He is well now, and we have come home. That is 
all there is to it.” 

“Then the more fool you, my dear,” said the 
other, with a sceptical wobbling of the head, and 
took herself off, wisely muttering. 

Blakemore called half an hour after one of these 
missionary visits of Mother Pugens. Marie received 
him in a manner so friendly and frank that he was at 
once reassured. She suffered him to kiss her cheek, 
and was passive to the caress of his arm about her 
shoulder, but she made no responsive gesture. 

“ You forgive me ? ” he whispered, lest Manders 
should hear him in the other room. 

“I have nothing to forgive,” she answered, her 
eyes calmly looking into his. 

“ Then you do love me a little ? ” he asked, 
betrayed into the question by his surprise. 

“Ah! yes; I love you. I love you.” Just a 
tremble in the voice, as if a sigh or a sob had started 
and been mastered ; just a quiver of the eyelids, as if 
i34 


MANDERS 


they were of a mind to close down over the calm, 
grey-blue eyes ; otherwise a very placid, emotionless 
answer. 

“ Then why did you leave me ? ” 

She pointed to the other room, the door between 
being closed. 

“For his sake — and for yours.” 

“It is for both our sakes that you should have 
stayed.” 

She smiled, going from him, and moving a chair 
forward for him. She sat down on the sommier. 

“I have told Edouard you were coming. He is 
waiting in there till I call him. I wanted to talk 
with you first. I shall not say easily what I want 
to say, for you know I am not wise. But I have 
been thinking it over and over, and perhaps you will 
be able to understand me. But you must not say 
anything while I am trying to tell you, or I shall get 
confused, and then it would all go from me and you 
would not know what I so much want you to know.” 

He made a movement toward her. 

“ No need of saying anything, Marie ; we under- 
stand each other as it is.” 

She checked him with the uplifting of her hand. 

“You must wait until I have told you.” 

“Yes, 111 let you tell me.” He sat back in the 
chair. 

There was a brief pause, as if she were getting her 
thoughts in order, not quite sure of their beginning 
or sequence. For all she seemed so self-possessed, 
}35 


MANDERS 


Blakemore felt that she had never been quite so 
much in need of the comforting touch of a friendly 
hand. But he would first let her have her way in 
this tender little comedy of troubled love. There 
should be self-upbraidings and tears, and reproaches 
too ; and then, strong arms and consolation. 

“ What do you call ebenist ? ” she asked presently. 

“ Cabinet-maker.” answered Blakemore. 

“ My father was a cabinet-maker in Marseilles, and 
we were very poor.” She spoke as if she were con- 
tinuing a story well begun. “ That is why my mother 
took me for a model to the artists when I was not so 
old as Edouard. I have always been a model. That 
is why I know so little. I was always a model for 
the nude. That is why I never thought it anything 
until — until Edouard made me think of it. My 
mother died, and after a time my father. Then an 
artist brought me to Paris. I was not twelve yet. 
Everyone took care of me. When I was sixteen I 
was a favourite model in the schools. M. Manders 
came with a friend to the Monier Academy one day 
and saw me. I didn’t care for him at first, and never 
listened to him. But after a time we were married. 
For a long time, — two years, three years, I don’t 
know, — I did not know what I had done — he was too 
kind to tell me — but Mother Pugens told me. He 
was a gentleman, and I had disgraced him, ruined 
him. I was a model. I don’t know why that made 
a difference, but because he married me his family 
disowned him, and then — you know what happened.” 

136 


MANDERS 


Her hands were over her face, and tears trickled 
between her fingers. 

“It was no fault of yours,” Blakemore cried, 
going to her and taking her hands in his. “Why 
do you blame yourself for the idiocy of others? 
Come, let us think no more of these things. They 
are past and done with. I am going to be your 
friend now — yours and Manders’.” 

The mere shadow of a smile played over her lips, 
moist with tears. 

“Don’t you understand what I have been saying 
to you ? ” she asked. “ I have been telling you of 
a mistake I have made — a great mistake, a mistake 
that I am myself just coming to understand. Do 
you think I am wicked enough to make the same 
mistake again ? ” 

“ What do you mean, Marie ? What mistake ? ” 

“You see, all that I intended to say to you has 
gone away from me. It was all thought out, but 
it is not clear now. This is clear to me, though ; 
I am not the kind of woman you should marry.” 

Blakemore started at the word. Marie noted the 
slight movement, and, comprehending its significance, 
hesitated a little and then went on in a lower 
voice, “You could not marry me; I would not let 
another man ruin his life for me ; and, for my boy’s 
sake, I will never be any man’s mistress.” 

She spoke these last words with such quiet dignity 
with such simple unaftectedness that Blakemore 
was impressed by the firmness of the purpose be- 
i37 


MANDERS 


hind them. He saw her in quite a new light, and 
felt humbled by the calm gaze of the eyes, in 
which there was the softness of a love which was 
not all maternal. He knew he held the heart of this 
woman ; and he knew, too, that an insuperable barrier 
was raised between them by the mere poise of a 
character he had supposed to be weakly submissive. 
He held her hands in silence, not knowing what to 
say. He felt that he owed her reparation in some 
way, but he was at the same time aware that she 
had closed all ways against him. He was oppressed 
by the sense of their separation. This was their 
going apart, their farewell. He knew it instinctively, 
though his heart beat rebelliously against the 
thought, and he felt a passionate yearning to take 
her consolingly in his arms, crying down with a 
pitiful love all her objections, overcoming by the 
ardour of his own emotions those self-denying scruples 
that would do her such grievous wrong. A remem- 
brance of Florence and the day at Vincennes irritated 
him strangely. He knew that Marie had thought 
of this more fortunate woman, this woman in every 
way qualified to be the wife of a gentleman, and 
he was certain that this thought had magnified in 
her mind her own unworthiness. He wished to 
reassure her, to make her understand how little weight 
conditions had with him, how thoroughly deserv- 
ing she was of his best esteem, his sincerest devotion. 
But these very reflections proved to him that it 
was compassion, pity, repentance which moved in 
138 


MANDERS 


his sentiments for Marie, that love was something 
other, for his pulses quickened under these thoughts 
of Florence, irritating though they were as pricks to 
conscience. 

“Well, Marie?” he said at length, looking down 
at the hands impassive in his own. 

She sighed, as if suddenly aroused from a reverie, 
and stood up, gently releasing her hands from his 
clasp as she did so. 

“ If you wish,” she said, “ I will pose for you until 
the picture is finished.” 

“ And then ? ” he asked, knowing very well what 
her answer would be. 

“ Then we will say good-bye.” 

“ No, Marie, not that ! We can always be good 
friends.” 

“ Yes, we can always be good friends,” she assented. 

“ And work together ! ” he urged. 

She shook her head, smiling in a half -sad way, the 
mist gathering in her eyes. There was no need of 
words. But he protested still. 

“Manders must be thought of, you know. His 
education must be looked to. You cannot do that as 
well as I. For Manders’ sake, Marie ! ” 

Again she shook her head. 

“ He will go to school. There are those where it 
costs but little. I can earn enough.” 

“ In the old way ? ” he asked. 

“ In some way,” she answered. 

“ You won’t let me help ? ” 
i39 


MANDERS 


“Yes, you can help; think well of me." She put 
out her hand, half-humorously, but much in earnest, 
too. 

“ Oh ! Marie ! ” He would have kissed her lips, 
but she turned aside her head, preventing him. 

“ Shall we go on with the picture?” she asked. 

“No,” he said, “I shall not finish the picture 
now.” There was a long silence, their clasped hands 
saying all there was to say. 

“ Good-bye, Walter ! ” she said at last. 

u Good-bye, Marie 1 ” 

“Shall I call Edouard?” 

“No.” 

He took up his hat and stood twirling it in his 
hands for some moments. Then, suddenly, and 
thinking only of their parting, — 

“ I am going to Italy in a few days." 

She remembered the letter postmarked Florence. 

“Yes; that is right,’’ she said. 


CHAPTER XI 


Even a rigid economy and an exemplary practice of 
all the personal and domestic virtues will not enable a 
man with a wife, two daughters, and a son at Harrow, 
to cut much of a figure in the world if he have no 
more income than a captain’s half-pay. Indeed, there 
were times in the experience of Captain Warley when 
the question of a no-longer-to-be-averted new frock 
for a growing daughter was as formidable a financial 
problem as the negotiation of a governmental loan. 
Fortunately for her own peace of mind, Mrs Warley 
had an aversion to Society, so that one carefully- 
guarded black satin gown and a mantilla shawl, or 
cloak, originally the property of her grandmother, 
served her triumphantly on occasions when she 
recognised the necessity of making an appearance. 
The captain, by an equal attentiveness to the folds 
and creases of a neatly-fitting if no longer fashionable 
walking suit, could transform himself from morning 
threadbareness into afternoon gentility with com- 
paratively little effort. Miss Warley, by reason of 
her vocation, might have enjoyed a respectable, well- 
dressed independence if she had not been troubled 
by some primitive ideas of filial responsibility that 


MANDERS 


urged her to give the moiety of her slender earnings 
into the household treasury. Nevertheless, her 
spinster angularities were becomingly enough draped 
in garments befitting the semi-social character of 
her professional relations. Miss Polly was at that 
uncomfortable and dispiriting age for girls of an 
economic menage when the length of skirts becomes 
a subject of feeling debate. Her daily battle with 
the vanities of fortune had to do with the distance 
between her boot-tops and the hem of her garments, 
and she thought life injuriously beset by hardships. 
The young gentleman at Harrow had much the best of 
it, as the representative at large of the family dignity ; 
and if he was inappreciative of the sacrifices made in 
his behalf, the household cheered itself to new de- 
privations by the reflection that a clever lad must be 
allowed some latitude in the matter of self-develop- 
ment. Altogether a fairly united family, with no 
more dissension and bickering than the circumstances 
warranted. To be sure, Mrs Warley had a some- 
what acidulated temper, that effervesced without 
much provocation and sometimes put the captain to 
the necessity of preparing the family dinner ; but 
the captain admitted to himself that perhaps his 
cynicisms were rather “ rasping ” at times, though he 
meant to be perfectly amiable in uttering them. In- 
deed, nothing amused or surprised him more than the 
twists of meaning Mrs Warley could give to a simple 
and, as he supposed, unoffending speech. He thought 
she had a special genius for perverting his casual and 
142 


MANDERS 


innocent remarks into personal affronts when her 
moods were cloudy, and the long intimacy of their 
union had not fitted him to read the signs that might 
have served as warnings to a less optimistic faith 
than his own. 

It was early candle-light, and the four members of 
the family were seated in the sparely-furnished room 
that served the double uses of drawing and dining- 
room. The captain and Miss Polly were absorbed 
in the intricate game of draughts, which was the 
favourite pastime of the old soldier, who found a 
serious campaigning interest in routing the forces 
of the enemy. Miss Warley was occupied in re- 
arranging the feathers of her hat, and Mrs Warley 
was considering the ever^vexatious problem of what 
should be served for dinner. This tranquillity was 
disturbed by a ring at the door-bell — extraordinary 
phenomenon for the hour. There was a general 
exclamation of surprise, an exchange of inquiring 
glances, but no one evinced an intention to answer 
the bell. 

“ I suppose,” said the captain, finally, jumping two 
of Miss Polly’s men as he spoke, “ that we might as 
well see who is there.” 

Thus urged, Miss Warley went to the door and let 
in Blakemore. 

His reception was so cordial, and in a few minutes 
he was so much an old, familiar friend, he was re- 
luctant to make it known that business rather than 
courtesy had prompted his first visit. He followed 
143 


MANDERS 


the captain’s conversational lead so deferentially that 
the delighted veteran was tempted to mount, in turn, 
all the hobbies of his intellectual stable, and in 
showering his opinions upon Blakemore imagined he 
was enjoying the play of his guest’s resourceful 
fancies. He took more for granted than was justified 
by Blakemore’s admissions, and Mrs Warley was 
moved to object once in a while, — 

“But that is not what Mr Blakemore said, Leonard/ 

“ It amounts to the same thing,” the captain would 
respond cheerily. “ Men of intelligence hold much the 
same opinions, though they differ sometimes in their 
modes of expression. Mr Blakemore says he finds a 
good many things to admire in the French, which 
does not at all dispute my opinion that they are an 
abominable people. He thinks them highly artistic, 
but that is not to deny that they are morally de- 
praved and hopelessly degenerate. He says he likes 
to live among them, but that is not to say that he 
does not thank God for having escaped the infamy 
of being born a Frenchman. I find we are very well 
agreed, my dear. We see the same thing from 
slightly different points of view; and you must not 
forget, my dear, that Mr Blakemore, in addition to 
being young and an enthusiast, is an American, and 
the Americans are only now reading the introductory 
pages of socio-political history. They are not as old 
as their mother yet,” he concluded, with a merry 
thrust at Blakemore with the end of a goose-quill he 
had picked up from the table. 

144 


MANDERS 


Blakemore soon after found a chance to say, “I 
fear I have overstayed my time without having 
mentioned one of the chief reasons for my call.” 

“ Overstayed your time!” exclaimed the captain. 
" Nothing of the kind ; you are going to honour us 
by stopping to dinner.” 

The captain shot a glance at Mrs Warley, and 
repented him. But having hoisted the flag of hos- 
pitality he determined to keep it floating, despite 
the threatenings that Blakemore was not in a 
position to see. 

“ I say dinner,” continued the captain, with re- 
doubled cheeriness, “as a mere figure of speech, 
for the fact is we have surrendered to one of the 
barbarisms of the Quarter and take our principal 
meal at one o’clock. As we all go to bed early, we 
have got into the way of making our evening 
repast a mere excuse for good-night conversation. 
We believe in light eating for sound sleeping. I’m 
sure you won’t mind sharing what scraps we may 
find in the larder.” 

Blakemore declared himself flattered to be received 
so informally into the family circle. 

“Don’t make any extra preparation,” said the 
captain, with a benevolent flourish, as Mrs Warley 
started for the kitchen. “ Mr Blakemore would 
rather we wouldn’t make company of him. I dare- 
say he hates fuss and feathers. I do, God knows ! ” 

Miss Warley went out, ostensibly to assist her 
mother, but really to make a flank movement on 
K 




MANDERS 


the neighbouring epicerie. But this stratagem Mrs 
Warley positively forbade. 

“ If your father will invite people to dinner when 
there is not enough in the house to feed a cat, let 
him take the consequences. I can see no sense in 
our slaving our lives away economising in this miser- 
able hole, if your father is going to indulge his 
extravagant caprices in this fashion. I haven’t the 
least idea what there is.” 

An inventory revealed three slices of ham, a quantity 
of bread, a jug of milk, a bottle and a half of beer, 
and enough chicoree for a modest salad. 

“Quite enough,” said Mrs Warley, emphatically, 
when Miss W arley once more proposed to move upon 
the grocer. “It will teach your father a lesson. I 
only hope he will be sufficiently ashamed of himself.” 

“I am afraid he won’t,” said Miss Warley, with a 
smile. 

“No, of course not. The fact that he has put me 
to a lot of embarrassment would keep him good- 
humoured through a famine. Nothing gives him so 
much pleasure as putting me out of temper.” 

“I didn’t mean that, you know, mother,” Miss 
Warley said, in a suave tone, and busying herself 
with the salad. 

“Oh, I know who has your sympathies,” Mrs 
Warley petulantly retorted. “Your father has turned 
all my children against me. He has taught you all 
to laugh at me and despise me ; but I have no doubt 
he will reap his reward, in this world or the next. 

146 


MANDERS 


I should not like to have to suffer his punishment 
for him ! I think you are putting entirely too much 
oil in that salad. Oil is expensive, and our bills were 
something frightful last month.” 

Miss Polly had laid the table, Blakemore assisting 
her, to the captain’s delight ; and the veteran, radiat- 
ing amity and loving-kindness, rashly plunged into 
the kitchen to help to fetch the things. He returned 
presently, his gaiety now a mere veneer extravagantly 
laid on, bearing the beer bottles, the milk jug and 
the salad. Miss Warley followed with the bread and 
ham, Mrs Warley bringing up the rear, a glacial smile 
upon her lips and a grim satisfaction sparkling in 
her dark brown eyes. The captain’s despairing query, 
“ Is this all there is ? ” as he surveyed the kitchen 
supply had gone far toward restoring Mrs Warley to 
her occasional sweetness of humour. 

“ Here we are, Blakemore ! ” exclaimed the captain, 
as he re-entered. “Pull up your chair and let us 
make merry. No form, no airs, you know. It is 
always Liberty Hall with the Warleys. Look at 
that ! Is that not a salad, eh ? What more does a 
man want with a bottle of beer and a loaf of bread ? 
What have you got there, Matilda, my dear ? Ham ! 
Lord bless us, we never eat meat at night ! Oh, for 
Mr Blakemore ! Very well, set it in front of his 
place. But a bad practice, Blakemore, a bad practice, 
my dear fellow ! Nothing so bad for the stomach as 
meat at night. Bad for the digestion and damnable 
for dreams. Don’t you find it so ? But you are young 
147 


MANDERS 


and tough. I was just as reckless at your age ; but 
we learn, my dear boy, we learn. There is a bottle 
of beer for you, and here is one for me. The ladies, 
sensible creatures, never drink anything but milk at 
this hour, though they don’t object to a little wine 
earlier in the day. We don’t care much for French 
wines as you find them in Paris ; not the sort of stuff 
we have at home. London is the only place in the 
world for good wine. That’s the market ! As for 
the Frenchman’s cigars — the less said about them 
the better. Their good ones are pretty bad, and their 
bad ones are only fairly good. Really, the French 
have nothing worth speaking of but pastry — and we 
don’t like that.” 

Cheerily running on, the captain diffused such a 
glow of good-fellowship, and imparted to the forced 
economy of his table such a character of hygienic 
wisdom, that by degrees the party became as jovial 
as if Barmecide feasts were the true productive centres 
of conviviality. Mrs Warley relaxed so much the 
early austerity of her manner that she undertook to 
vie with the captain in the discharge of pleasantries, 
and Blakemore found her a woman of the lively in- 
telligence which allies itself to wit. It was surpris- 
ing, too, how great a transformation was made in 
the appearance of Miss Warley, whose plain features 
assumed a sort of beauty under the spell of sunny 
gaiety to which she surrendered herself. Kind hearts 
are wonderful illuminators, and perhaps there are no 
hearts kinder than those which beat under the prim 

148 


MANDERS 


bodices and formal waistcoats of English upper middle- 
class conservatism. Even Miss Polly, still at an age 
when it becomes one to be seen rather than heard, 
could not resist the levities of the occasion, but be- 
haved over her milk as if it had been an intoxicant. 
Altogether, Blakemore thought he had never sat so 
agreeably at table, and laid down his napkin with 
the consciousness of having dined to satisfaction. He 
gave frank expression to his contentment, his remark 
calling from the captain the wholesome generalisation 
that hospitality consists not in the things one dis- 
penses but wholly in the spirit of dispensation. As 
there was no room to which the ladies could retire, 
the captain, with a deferential wave of the hand in 
the direction of Mrs Warley, accorded Blakemore the 
privilege of smoking as they sat, if he was in the habit 
of smoking after dinner. The captain himself had 
rather gotten out of the habit, because, as he said, bad 
tobacco made him ill, and he found it difficult to keep 
himself supplied with good weeds from abroad. He 
might have explained that his abstinence was the 
result of many lectures by Mrs Warley upon the 
selfish extravagance of buying cigars to waste in 
nasty smoke when she was doing without a servant 
in order that the family might wear whole stockings. 
It was grateful to see, however, the sybaritic gleam 
in the captain’s eyes as he deprecatingly took the 
undeniably good cigar Blakemore offered him from 
his pocket-case. 

“Merely to be sociable,” he said, and, blowing 
149 


MANDERS 


rapturous clouds above the gently wavering candle 
flames, he added, with a sigh, “It seems a pity to 
burn such virtuous tobacco. Do you know, I think 
that is what was the matter with Cain ; he grubbed 
up a lot of tobacco plants in his ignorance and made 
a bonfire of them — strong evidence of the theory that 
the original Garden of Eden was in America.” 

This irreverent conceit was a favourite pleasantry 
with the captain, the more cherished for the shock it 
gave Mrs Warley. He laughed immoderately at her 
remonstrance, an invariable “ Why, Leonard ! ” and 
disclaimed responsibility by declaring he had first 
heard it from General Lord Something-or-other in 
India, a noble authority for any quotation. 

Not until the evening was well advanced, and Miss 
Polly had retired dutifully to bed at a nod from 
her mother, did Blakemore find a suitable opening 
for an explanation of his coming so unceremoni- 
ously to the Warley s. He wished to interest them 
in Manders. 

“ My daughter thinks him an uncommonly bright 
boy,” the captain said, when the subject was intro- 
duced, “ and already feels a deep degree of hopeful in- 
terest in him. She thinks the trouble is going to be in 
keeping him back, eh, Matilda, my dear ? ” 

Miss Warley concurred so feelingly that Blakemore 
felt relieved of embarrassment as to what he should 
say on Marie’s account. He proceeded at once to 
state his object. He was going away for a time. 
Madame Manders was not a woman who would 
150 


MANDERS 


consent to receive benefits from him or anyone to 
whom she could not make compensation, and, being no 
logger in his employment, so to speak, she would 
naturally be disinclined to accept favours at his 
hands, and he feared she might not be able to afford 
to give Manders a music teacher. But if it could be 
made to appear that Miss Warley was enough in- 
terested in the boy to give him lessons gratuitously 
rather than lose so promising a pupil, why, he, Blake- 
more, would be only too happy to pay the tuition. 
Madame Manders would be none the worse for the 
innocent deception from which Manders would derive 
so much good. “ And,” continued Blakemore, bestow- 
ing upon the captain an argumentative smile as he 
knocked off his cigar ash, “ I should have the satis- 
faction of knowing that some of my money was being 
put to a worthy use.” 

“I understand you perfectly,” said the captain, 
nodding his head sagely, “ and I commend your desire 
thoroughly. My dear young sir, if every man of 
means would take it upon himself to look out for 
the future of some deserving poor lad, we could soon 
close up our prisons and alms-houses, and reorganise 
society on a decent basis. What we need in this 
blessed world of ours is the recognition of the fact 
that no man has a right to be happy who is not in- 
telligently and persistently contributing to the happi- 
ness of those who are less fortunate than himself. 
But we are blackguards — blackguards, the most of us, 
my dear Blakemore, and we scramble for the front 
151 


MANDERS 


seats without caring a rap what we trample on. I 
honour your intention, and I am sure my daughter 
will cheerfully waive any scruple of conscience that 
might stand in the way of furthering what you so 
sensibly term an innocent deception. Am I not right, 
Matilda, my dear ? Don’t you fully agree with me, 
Mrs Warley ? Shall we not oblige our young friend ? 
You see it is settled. There is my hand, with the 
guaranty that my daughter will look after the boy 
as carefully as if he were her own.” 

There was some dispute about terms, Blakemore 
wishing to be generous, the captain insisting upon 
exact equity and scorning the idea of possible extras, 

“ There are no extras under an agreement between 
gentlemen,” he declared, with an emphatic shake of 
the head, and, consulting Miss Warley as to her terms, 
figured out with, mathematical precision that the first 
quarter, for which Blakemore insisted on paying in 
advance, would come to just one hundred and thirty - 
five francs, the amount being at once given into Miss 
Warley ’s hands. 

“A deuced fine fellow, eh, girls?” said the captain, 
addressing his wife and daughter, when Blakemore 
had gone. 

“ Oh ! I suppose there are worse men in the world,” 
Mrs Warley admitted; “but it seems to me he takes 
rather a curious interest in this Madame Manders, as 
you call her.” 

“Suspicious, my dear, always suspicious! It is 
devilish strange how little faith women have in one 
152 


MANDERS 


another. One would imagine that you don’t believe 
in any such thing as — ” 

“Come, Leonard, don’t be a fool. It is bed time. 
You have talked enough for one night.” 


153 


CHAPTER XII 

As the atmosphere and life of Paris stimulate and set 
in play the sensuous fibres of animal being, so the 
atmosphere and life of Rome animate the nobler 
emotions and the finer sentiments of impressionable 
natures. Sensibility can have no surer re-baptism 
into moral grace than comes of passing with con- 
sciousness from the ever modern and febrile French 
capital to the tradition-haunted dignity of the first 
of Italian cities. Vice itself puts on the garment of 
reserve, and though Hetaira drive along the Corso 
with her retinue, as her custom is, when the world 
is gay, the air, heavy with the ghostly memories of 
two thousand years, softens her laughter into the 
counterfeit of modesty. It is the extravagance of 
paradoxy that a city, indelibly stained by excesses in 
all the crimes and infamies of history, should breathe 
out the spirit of loftiest inspiration, and quicken in 
the alien soul all the elements that make for loveliness 
and virtue. There are squalor and viciousness enough 
in Rome to eat out the heart of any other city ; but 
the canker may not touch the vitality of Rome while 
the miraculous dome of St Peter’s towers in bene- 
diction over the people of the Seven Hills, or the 
i54 


MANDERS 


battered columns of the Forum are respected witnesses 
to the solemnity of a glorious past. 

This is seldom a first impression. Disappointment 
is heavy upon the spirit in the initial days. Modernity 
gives to expectant enthusiasm a humiliating blow that 
makes appreciation slow, and Miss Storey, just come 
from Florence, a city instantly responsive to one’s 
preconceived ideal, felt the change grievously and 
wished at once to re-arrange their winter plan. But 
by the time Blakemore and Mr Mendenhall arrived, 
the place had, as she expressed it, begun to lay hold 
on her, and the sympathies of these two young men, 
affectionately acquainted with Rome, speedily brought 
her to a complete surrender, so that by the end of an 
exceptionally benignant January, she was, as Mrs 
Storey declared, “ a Roman fanatic.” 

Blakemore had joined the Storeys with a wavering 
sense of proprietory right over Florence in his mind, 
and was disposed to attach a special importance to 
some trifling incidents of their Paris leave-taking. 
He contrived visits to galleries and churches that 
should exclude the other and dispensable members of 
the quartette, sentimental projects in which Florence 
showed an acquiescent interest, but of which Mr 
Mendenhall was always mysteriously aware in time 
to give them his personal attention. Mrs Storey’s 
intuitions seemed to be almost equally fine, and 
Blakemore began to take argumentative note of the 
fact that whenever the chances of sight - seeing 
separated the party, it was his invariable fortune to 
i55 


MANDERS 


be left in the charge of this peremptorily vivacious 
lady. Of course he took occasion to tax Florence with 
duplicity, adding to his plaint a certain amount of 
mild reprobation. Looking at him with an affectation 
of surprise, in which lay a good deal of mischievous 
malice, she exclaimed, “ And do you think, my dear 
Walter, that I dare trust myself alone with, you after 
the way you behaved the last time we were together 
without guardians? Besides, I like being with Mr 
Mendenhall. He has ideas ; and he isn’t always 
trying to stop me in front of pictures with cupids in 
them. He actually knows the history of the things 
and places we see, and can tell me about them, and do 
it without making me feel my ignorance. On the 
other hand, mamma is getting to like you very well, 
and thinks you quite a respectable cicerone. I should 
suppose you would see the advantages of the arrange- 
ment without an elaborate explanation. But since 
you are unreasonable enough to want to limit my 
pleasures, do you mind telling me upon what grounds 
you base your claim to my obedience ? ” 

“I thought an engagement conferred some privi- 
leges on a fellow,” said Blakemore, smiling, but not 
entirely confident. 

“That is something I know nothing about,” she 
replied complacently. “I suppose an engagement 
allows of a certain amount of freedom, but I have 
never felt the need of it. I have always been at 
perfect liberty to do as I pleased, and I never could 
see that an engagement would enlarge my scope of 
156 


M ANDERS 


action. When I find myself hampered, I’ll think 
about it. In the meantime, please bear in mind that 
your only right in me is the right to have a serious 
talk with me some eighteen months from now if I am 
then inclined to listen to you.” 

“ But your letters to me — ” urged Blakemore. 

“ Mere compositions, my dear Walter. It is the 
duty of every self-respecting woman to advance her- 
self in the art of letter- writing. She never knows 
when it may become useful. That is all that ever made 
Madame de Sevigne or Jane Carlyle anything more 
than domestic appendages. You are not bigot enough 
to deny one some latitude in that field of invention, 
I hope ? I must have someone on whom to practise ! 
Why are men so ridiculously given to making logical 
deductions from simple casualties ? ” 

Indeed, Blakemore smoked many a good-night 
cigar that lost flavour in the bitterness of his reflec- 
tions upon the fretful deficiencies and irritating 
overpluses of this particular season in Rome, the least 
satisfying of the several he had passed in the hitherto 
favoured city. Mrs Storey, who professed an abhor- 
rence of hotels, and a detestation of pensions, had 
taken a small but comfortable house just beyond the 
Porto del Popolo in the embrace of the Pincian hill, 
where she entertained with such incessant energy 
that Florence seemed to revolve in the inner eddies 
of an ever-widening social swirl which kept Blake- 
more in its outward expansion. Necessarily there 
was an increasing number of reciprocal parties and 
i57 


MANDERS 


dinners of a limited character, to which neither 
Blakemore nor Mr Mendenhall was invited, and they 
found opportunities to indulge in those employments 
precious to the hearts of men which are exclusive of 
the frivolously feminine. It was on one of these 
occasions that, as they idled over their coffee and 
cognac in the smoke - room of their hotel, Mr 
Mendenhall suddenly asked, — 

“ Do you ever play ? ” 

“ Oh ! yes, once in a way ; though I am not much 
good at it — except for the other fellows,” Blakemore 
answered, laughingly. “ Why ? Are you much in 
that way?” 

“ Well, I have not done much at it since I tried a 
* system ’ at Monte Carlo last season. But I feel in 
the mood for a turn at it to-night. What do you 
say?” 

“ I don’t mind a lira or two,” Blakemore assented. 
“ I haven’t looked at a card for a year. But I should 
prefer a quiet little game of poker to baccarat. One 
loses so much more intelligently when he holds the 
cards himself.” 

“ You Americans have such a passion for ‘ bluff.’ 
Do you know Orteviti’s ? ” 

“ No.” 

“I’ll introduce you. A quiet sort of place. A 
kind of club, you know, where you only meet the 
right sort. You can lose your money without 
suspicion. Your gentleman Italian is the most re- 
fined gamester in the world, and takes your purse in 
158 


MANDERS 


a way that does you honour. Come along. We’ll 
go to the ballet for half an hour or so and get to 
Orteviti’s in the thick of it. Orteviti, you know, 
belongs to a splendid old family, and had a doge or 
two, and half a dozen senators for his ancestors. 
Poor as the devil now, but has to keep up appear- 
ances. Lives at Venice in the summer, and puts gilt 
on the family traditions with his winter earnings. 
Most pathetic thing, the old Italian nobility. Rags 
and pride makes a deucedly uncomfortable combina- 
tion ; but the beggars have really got something to 
be proud of. I don’t know but they’ve got the best 
of it after all. There is something great about a 
nation that will starve to death rather than part 
with its art treasures. Some of our commercial idiots 
will tell you that the Italians hang on to their pictures 
and things merely as a bait to money-spending 
tourists. Rot ! without a yard of canvas or a foot of 
statuary, Italy would have attraction enough to draw 
the world into her sunshine. Why, just to lie in a 
gondola and see the sun go down, or the moon come 
up behind the domes of Venice ; or to chuck coppers 
at the naked little brats swimming in the Bay of 
Naples ; or to watch the washerwomen on the banks 
of the Arno; or to fish in the mud of old Tiber, 
here, is worth all the damned nonsense of our pomp- 
ous modernism, with its trade arrogance and its 
gold-clinking vulgarities. I always feel like an ass 
swaggering through the church parade in Hyde Park, 
or gasping in the crush of some ostentatious reception, 


MANDERS 


or bolting the dishes of a deadly ceremonious dinner ; 
but when I get under the skies of Italy, where you 
can reach up and touch the blue, and see spread 
around you every tone and shade and form and con- 
dition that enters into the perfection of beauty, I feel 
like a son of God, and I’m devilish glad to be alive. 
What are you laughing at ? Come along ; I am 
dangerously in the way of saying something. It is 
lucky they have ballets and things in Italy, or we 
would all be writing Childe Harolds, Casa Guidi 
windows and stuff of that sort. There is enough of 
the earth and the flesh here to keep the average man 
normal. But I should think you painters would go 
stark mad.” 

The ballet was “Excelsior,” a great rage at the 
time, and the two friends were familiar enough with 
it to time its best effects and escape the ennui of its 
less interesting features. The ballet, as the worldling 
knows, is a form of mental dissipation most enjoy- 
able when taken in small allowances and standing. 
Nothing is as destructive of the aesthetic values of 
the divertissement as a fatigued eye or an indolent 
posture of body. Blakemore and Mendenhall drifted 
about, giving the stage a critical attention from 
different points of view, gossiping with acquaint- 
ances, exchanging glances with would-be indulgent 
signorinas, until the Triumph of Light reminded them 
of Orteviti and the real purpose of their evening. 

The places at table were taken, with one exception, 
and Mendenhall sat in this, Blakemore playing over 
160 


MANDERS 


his shoulder, in an incidental way, that permitted 
him to look about. The spacious room was charm- 
ingly furnished, and presented so little the appear- 
ance of a gambling establishment, that one might 
have supposed that a gracefully luxurious drawing- 
room had been temporarily surrendered to the pleas- 
ure of a purely social card party. At one of the 
further tables were several young women in the 
light splendour of evening dress, who played with 
an intent silence which betrayed the entirely practical 
purpose of the gathering. In the course of an hour 
the new arrivals were numerous enough to make the 
standing players as many as those who were seated, 
and Mendenhall was having such a run of luck that 
several players were following his lead. One of these 
was a nervously impulsive man, prematurely grey, 
and wearing a decoration, who stood immediately 
at the left of Blakemore, and placed his bets or 
recovered his winnings with exclamations of such 
personal aplomb that one might have thought his 
volition alone determined the run of the cards. 
After a time Mendenhall lost several plays in succes- 
sion, and on the last of these the nervous gentleman 
so far forgot himself as to tap Mendenhall on the 
shoulder as he said irritably, — 

“Sir, you are playing without discretion.” 
Mendenhall looked up, saying with good humour, — 
“ Then it is very foolish of you to follow me.” 

“ I do not follow you, sir ! ” 

“ Then be good enough not to comment on my play.” 

L 


MANDERS 


“ You are insolent, sir.” 

“ And you impertinent.” 

“ Make your play, gentlemen,” said the croupier, in 
his perfunctory way. 

Mendenhall prepared to place his billets. 

“My card,” said the nervous gentleman, thrusting 
the article in front of Mendenhall. 

“ Thank you ; I have no use for it at present,” said 
Mendenhall, imperturbably. 

“Will you oblige me with yours?” demanded the 
other. 

“With pleasure,” Mendenhall answered, taking a 
card from his case and handing it up over his shoulder 
without looking at the angry gentleman, who took 
it very ceremoniously, but saying satirically, 

“ It lacks an address, sir.” 

Mendenhall named his hotel, whereupon the gentle- 
man, declaring that he had the honour to bid his 
adversary good-night, withdrew with much dignity 
to another position at the table, where he carefully 
inscribed the address on the card. 

No one besides Blakemore gave any attention to 
the incident or seemed to lift eyes from the cloth. 
The gaming-table is the one arc of the sociological 
circle at which the gathered particles preserve an 
incurious individuality. To mind one’s own business 
is the exclusive occupation of this the only practicable 
democracy. But Blakemore was seriously disturbed, 
perhaps owing to an insufficient interest in the game, 
and in deference to his solicitude, Mendenhall soon 
162 


MANDERS 


after arose, not much the gainer by the evening’s 
industry. As they were putting on their overcoats, 
Blakemore said, lapsing into a southernism, — 

“ Well, I reckon you are in for it.” 

“ Oh ! I don’t know,” Mendenhall answered, smil- 
ing; “that was Count Vasselli. He has a mania for 
collecting cards, I believe. If he doesn’t forget the 
episode by morning he will probably send me an 
apology, accompanied by an invitation to eat spa- 
ghette with him. In any event, you needn’t have 
any concern on my account. I fence rather well.” 

When they got into the street there were no cabs 
in sight, but being in the vein for a smart walk to 
the hotel, they pushed along with little better light 
than the paling fires of the morning stars. They 
were crossing into one of the narrow, winding, dark 
streets running at right angles with the Corso, when, 
experience common enough to belated pedestrians 
through the meaner quarters of Rome, they were 
suddenly set upon by a half-dozen zealous but un- 
reasoning ruffians, unlearned in the hitting power 
of two physically-trained Anglo-Saxons with a pre- 
judice against highway robbery. Several minutes of 
persistent demonstration were necessary to convince 
the thoughtless aggressors of their want of judgment, 
but even then it was the chance appearance of two of 
the constabulary rather than the force of blows that 
determined their flight. 

“ Rather lively, eh ?” said Mendenhall, laughing, as 
their assailants made away. 

163 


MANDERS 


“Yes. Did you get hurt ? ” 

“ No, I think not, though one of them gave me a 
sharp thump in the side that I felt for a moment.” 

The officers were less disposed to pursue the fugi- 
tives than to question suspiciously the victims of the 
assault. In the midst of answering their excited 
inquiries, Mendenhall grasped Blakemore’s shoulder, 
exclaiming, — 

“ By George, old fellow ! I’ve got a queerish sen- 
sation ! You would better take hold of me.” 

And not only Blakemore had need to take hold of 
him, for, with some jocular protests against being 
made the butt of a peculiarly feminine artifice he 
presently slipped into unconsciousness ; and the officers 
became aware that they had neglected a rare chance 
to distinguish themselves in a chase after assassins. 

“Well, doctor?” Blakemore asked anxiously at the 
hotel half an hour later, as the surgeon turned from 
dressing Mendenhall’s wound. 

“A serious case,” replied the doctor, shaking his 
head. “But I think it will be all right. Any re- 
latives — any women here?” 

“ No.” But he thought of Mrs Storey and Florence. 
The idea of either of them in a sickroom struck him 
as being painfully grotesque. 

But ministering angels are to be had for hire 
in these forward days of systematised pursuits, and 
there was no danger that Mendenhall would lack 
for suitable care. 

Mendenhall himself said to the surgeon, — 

164 


ldANDERS 


“Is there any hope of pulling me through?” 

“Every hope,” was the answer. 

“ Then send no word to my family as long as you 
have a hope.” 

Happily, hope is a virtue easy to be entreated, and 
there came no need for the message home. Menden- 
hall had a constitutional right to recovery, which 
he exercised with heroism, and mended apace. After 
the crisis was past there came flowers and messages 
from the Storeys, and then came the Storeys 
themselves. 

“I don’t care what people say,” Miss Florence 
urged against her mother’s conventional objections. 
“ People’s opinions are much too silly for one to 
bother oneself about. Mr Mendenhall is a friend and 
among strangers. If by reading to him or talking 
with him an hour or two a day I can help along his 
getting well, it is my duty to do it ; and I’ll make it 
my pleasure, too.” 

“Very well,” Mrs Storey assented at last, shrug- 
ging her shoulders, but consoling herself with the 
possibility that “something may come of it.” The 
fact that an able-bodied and youngish heir to great 
expectations had been so suddenly and so vulgarly 
brought near to the end of things instructed her 
anew that time is measured by incidents rather 
than by duration, and that it is the part of wisdom 
to make hay when the sun shines. This vein of 
philosophical reflection led her to the conclusion 
that the accident to Mendenhall was a providential 
165 


MANDERS 


interposition that promised to correct that obliquity 
of mind in Florence which seemed to prefer a 
commonplace dabbler in oils to a prospective peer. 
She found it convenient to superintend the daily 
visits that were drawing nigh unto intimacy, and 
imagined that she detected symptoms altogether 
flattering to her hopes. If it were not for the 
unbalancing presence of Blakemore, she thought 
there could be no reasonable doubt as to the out- 
come of relations so romantically fostered. Perhaps, 
within the circumstances, it was in a measure pardon- 
able if her maternal sentiments gave an exultant 
bound when, the morning after Mendenhall’s first 
venture out for a carriage ride, Blakemore came 
agitatedly to tell her and Florence that he was off 
to catch the first American steamer, a cable message 
having notified him of his father’s probably fatal 
illness. Judge Blakemore, being an estimable gentle- 
man and one of the justices of the Supreme Court of 
her country, had always enjoyed Mrs Storey’s respect 
and admiration, and perhaps had been allowed some 
share in her sincere regard ; but she felt that he had 
never done anything so graceful as timing his demise 
to suit her purposes, so there was a good deal of 
genuineness in the sympathetic tears with which 
she bade the son good-bye. Walter was one of the 
surviving examples of that perhaps fortunately 
almost extinct species of young gentlemen who sub- 
missively reverenced and loved their begetters, and 
grief at parting with Florence was not the chief 


MANDERS 


burden of his heart. The young lady easily dis- 
cerned her disadvantage at the moment, but, 
strangely enough, she put it under most favourable 
interpretation. He parted from her in Mrs Storey’s 
presence, and the only sign between them was that 
Florence held out to him the hand on which sparkled 
the ring he had given her. 


167 


CHAPTER XIII 


As he was leaving the hotel, after having tipped in 
the proper mathematical ratio the army of servants 
summoned to witness his departure, Blakemore was 
handed a letter from Miss Warley. No one, perhaps, 
has attempted to ascertain why spinsters who ap- 
proach middle age are so much more conscientious 
than the rest of the world, though every one is 
pleasantly or painfully, according to conditions, 
aware of the fact. Miss Warley was even 
punctilious, and she conceived it to be her duty, 
as a beneficiary of Blakemore’s bounty, to make 
and forward a monthly memorandum of whatever 
concerned the musical progress or personal welfare 
of Manners. These reports were mere memoranda, 
for Miss Warley was restrained by a nice sense of 
feminine propriety from entering into anything in 
the nature of a friendly correspondence with a 
young man who might be equal to the misinter- 
pretation of purely disinterested motives. Blake- 
more opened the letter as lie drove to the station, 
and read the usual approbation of Manders, there 
being nothing in the report itself to justify the 
1 68 


MANDERS 


writing. A postscript, however, interested him in 
one of its sentences. 

“I have done as yon requested about the piano. 
I got a very suitable one for four hundred francs. 
I told Madame Manders it was one I got at a 
bargain, and begged her to take care of it for me. 
She, by the way, coughs in a way I don’t like. She 
caught a cold two or three months ago, that hangs on 
most stubbornly. She laughs when I speak about it, 
and says it doesn’t trouble her at all. Perhaps it 
is nothing.” 

The pulling up of the cab at the station roused 
Blakemore from a reverie, and he smiled to remember 
the absurdity of it. He had been building all sorts 
of inconsequential fancies around that cough of 
Marie’s, as if a cough were something new under 
the sun. And Marie might pose for the goddess 
Hygeia herself. 

Someone called to him. Mendenhall was sitting in 
a cab at the opposite end of the platform. 

“You didn’t expect to see me here? I drove 
out as far as the tomb of Cecilia Metella after 
bidding you good-bye, when I recollected that I 
hadn’t paid you off as nurse. I want you to 
wear this.” 

He took a pin from his cravat as he spoke and 
gave it to Blakemore. It was a moonstone in an 
old-fashioned, curious setting with small diamonds. 

“ My grandfather picked it up somewhere in 
India. I believe it belonged to a rajah who 
169 


MANDERS 


afterwards died some sort of death. There is no 
end of bad luck goes with a moonstone. Every- 
body who has anything to do with one is bound 
to die soon or late. I hope you are thoroughly 
superstitious ? ” 

“ I am,” said Blakemore, as he put the pin in his 
own cravat, “so I’ll have to buy the point of this, 
you know. There is your money,” giving Menden- 
hall a two lire piece. 

Mendenhall thought him rather serious. 

“ By George ! I believe you are superstitious ! ” 
he said, laughing. 

Blakemore smiled. “ I’ll take my chances,” he 
said. 

But he imagined that he had excellent reason to 
be disturbed in mind by this simple and apparently 
very friendly incident. This pin and a ring were 
the only ornaments worn by Mendenhall, and the 
one was as much identified with him as the other. 
Blakemore now recalled a remark made by Florence 
in commenting upon Mendenhall’s evident fondness 
for the pin. 

“ I could never marry a man who owned a 
moonstone.” 

He thought it singular that this disfavoured 
object should be made a gift to him at this par- 
ticular time, and he argued from it to conclusions 
not in the least agreeable. He could not see in it 
the chance offering of an amiable spirit; he recog- 
nised only a purpose on Mendenhall’s part to get 
170 


MANDERS 


rid of something to which Florence affected an 
aversion. Clearly enough Florence had expressed 
her prejudices to Mendenhall himself. The question 
in Blakemore’s mind was of Mendenhall’s motive in 
giving the pin to him. Was it the act of a con- 
scious rival who supposed his purpose could not be 
suspected, or was Mendenhall deceived by a belief 
that he occupied a preferred place in Florence’s 
esteem ? Blakemore was not long in forming the 
opinion that Mendenhall was a man incapable of 
duplicity in his professed friendships with men; and 
this conviction forced him to the inference that 
Florence was not above playing fast-and-loose with 
more than one heart at a time. Yet Florence was 
audacious in her candour. And had she given him 
any right to feel an exclusive’ claim to her devo- 
tion? Was not the understanding between them 
one that left them both free to form such attach- 
ments as should best please them in the course of 
two years? He ended by acquitting both Menden- 
hall and Florence, without greatly consoling himself. 

“ I’ve half a mind to make a trip to your country 
myself,” said Mendenhall, as they parted. “Don’t 
be surprised if I walk in on you some fine morning.” 
He had left the cab, and, leaning on a stick, was 
walking beside Blakemore, not much the worse for 
his illness.” 

“ You will always find the latch-string outside the 
door,” Blakemore responded warmly. “ And I think 
you owe it to yourself to come. A man cannot 


171 / 




/ 


MANDERS 


appreciate civilisation until he has visited the United 
States.” 

“ One can take that remark either way,” Menden- 
hall said, laughingly. 

“ Take it the right way,” laughed Blakemore. 

They talked purposelessly until the voyagers were 
requested to take their places. 

“ Any final message for the ladies ? ” Mendenhall 
asked, as the guard closed the carriage door. Blake- 
more considered a moment. 

“ Yes, tell Miss Storey that you have given me your 
moonstone,” he said, with a droll expression not easy 
to interpret. 

“ A singular message ! ” Mendenhall thought, watch- 
ing the train pull away. “I wonder if he knows? 
Rather awkward if he does. What the deuce 
prompted me to give it him ? Perhaps he and 
Florence — By George, I’ll find out ! ” 

He returned to his cab, giving the driver the 
address of the Storeys. 

Mrs Storey and Florence were engaged in one of 
those largely one-sided talks which Mrs Storey styled 
“ a little friendly conversation,” consisting of maternal 
views oratorically declaimed and filial interruptions 
not always reverential. Naturally enough, Mrs Storey 
was relieving her mind of the burden of thoughts 
which sprang spontaneously out of her satisfaction in 
being delivered of Blakemore’s depressing presence. 
She was a firm believer in the curative power of 
absence over the disorders of the feminine heart, but 
1 72 


MANDERS 


did not attach enough importance to the contributory 
virtues of a still tongue. In her moral pharmacopoeia 
insistence was everything, and to “ hammer away ” at 
a given idea was to ensure its efficacy. Florence 
evidently was predisposed to think too well of Blake- 
more. The remedy, then, lay in the urgency of 
Blakemore’s special and general demerits. Mrs Storey 
had been inspired to describe him as “ a flaccid young 
man,” and the phrase seemed to her so apposite that 
she coddled it in all the variations of the thesaurus. 
Florence was trifling with the keys of the piano, 
rather more interested in the graceful use of her 
fingers than conscious of the piece she was slighting, 
and not strictly attentive to her mother. Her peace- 
ful acceptance of the eloquence in depreciation of the 
supposed object of her inclination was gratifying to 
Mrs Storey as the evidence of a successful treatment, 
and the amiable lady was encouraged to emphasise 
her criticisms. 

“ The long and short of it is,” she said, “ that he 
lacks intellectual stamina.” 

“ That is not it,” interrupted Florence ; “ he has too 
much sensibility. He has not yet got rid of all of his 
conscientious scruples.” 

“ Fiddlesticks ! ” exclaimed Mrs Storey. “ He is an 
emotional weather-vane, that whirls from one senti- 
mental point of the compass to another with every 
change of circumstance. He has neither stability of 
purpose nor fixity of idea, and no more intelligent 
ambition than a caterpillar. I don’t believe he will 
173 


MANDERS 


ever amount to a row of pins. He is one of the men 
you can lead about by the nose as they do donkeys.” 

“An excellent quality in a husband, don’t you 
think, mamma? You have had a pleasant experi- 
ence, I should say.” 

“You are unkind, Florence, to twit me with your 
father’s infirmities ! I didn’t make the man ! But 
though I have learned to make the best of a difficult 
position, I have no wish to see you subjected to the 
like conditions. I am giving you the benefit of my 
experience in advising you how to avoid my mistakes. 
Nothing could grieve me so much as seeing you married 
to one of those domestic animals who think their 
petty orbit makes the circumference of the universe.” 

“ Then you don’t think Mr Mendenhall is a ‘ domestic 
animal ’ ? ” 

“Not of the ruminating variety. But I don’t see 
why you need be frivolous. I am not thinking of 
men as mere men. I suppose in that respect one is 
as good or as bad as another. But I am thinking of 
them in their relation to Society as units or ciphers, 
and I positively revolt against the idea of being made 
the mother-in-law of a cipher. Walter Blakemore is 
not only a cipher ; he has the minus sign in front of 
him as well. Mr Mendenhall fills the eye quite as 
commandingly, and has a place in the world already 
prepared for him. He is somebody. There is no 
comparison between them. One is scarcely a possi- 
bility, the other is a fact; one is a gentleman by 
sufferance, the other by an ancestral patent of 
*74 


MANDERS 


nobility; one may get so far as to be a tolerable 
painter of miniatures, the other will in all probability 
be a peer and able to hire painters as he needs them ; 
one can keep you struggling in the social crush, the 
other would lift you above the mob; but I don’t 
insist on Mr Mendenhall, if you are able to do better. 
I don’t care to pick out the man ; I only stipulate for 
position.” 

“ And happiness, mamma ? ” 

“ Bah ! the happy woman is the envied woman. I 
wish you would study life instead of reading novels. 
The sentimental twaddlers who write books are 
responsible for nine-tenths of the married misery. 
They stuff foolish heads full of insipid romance, and 
make girls believe that marriage is a sort of Virginia 
reel, in which one is always grinning at her partner. 
Marriage should be an exact science based on careful 
calculation, and the happy marriages are practical 
ones, in which sentiment is an after consideration or 
no consideration at all.” 

Florence rose from the piano with a laugh as the 
bell rang. 

“ You are delicious, mamma ! What a pity you are 
not at the head of a girls’ boarding-school ! What 
sport you could have with the affinities. And I 
suppose you would end by becoming an advocate of 
polyandry. What a triumph for woman when she 
can have an assortment of variously distinguished 
husbands, ranging from a dissipated duke to a rising 
theologian.” 


i7S 


MANDERS 


“Sometimes, Florence, your ideas are positively 
indecent,” said Mrs Storey, severely. 

Mendenhall was shown in, to the surprise of both 
ladies, who thought it imprudent of him to be driving 
out alone so soon after being set free of the doctor’s 
care. 

“I am quite myself again,” he insisted. “In fact 
I was kept in a week longer than was necessary. 
These Italian doctors don’t know much about English 
constitutions. I only carry a stick to oblige the old 
medico, who would feel chagrined if I made the case 
less serious than he thought it was.” 

“It is so strange they don’t catch the scoundrels 
who did it,” Mrs Storey ventured. 

“ I am not so sure they haven’t caught them,” said 
Mendenhall, smiling. “ I was pretty certain of one of 
the chaps they brought in for me to look at the other 
day; but I’ve known so many cases of mistaken 
identity that I gave the poor devil the benefit of the 
doubt, and they let him go.” 

“To do better next time, with a longer knife,” 
Florence suggested. 

“You are uncommonly tender-hearted, Mr Menden- 
hall,” Mrs Storey said, bestowing a look of benevolent 
approval upon him. 

“ I’m afraid not,” Mendenhall answered, giving an 
emphatic though slight side jerk of the head to in- 
dicate his seriousness. “ I am of rather a vindictive 
turn of mind. I find a great deal of keen pleasure 
in getting the better of my enemies, and I have no 
176 


MANDERS 


objection whatever to grinding my heel into the 
head of a reptile that may get in my path. But I 
do not believe that every man with criminal apti- 
tudes is really a criminal, or that every hang-dog- 
looking ruffian is necessarily an assassin. Then, 
to be candid with you, I hate the tedious processes 
and lingering stupidities of French and Italian courts 
of law, and I would rather my assailant should 
go scot-free than that I should have to go through 
the worry of the prosecution. As it is, the police 
seem to be acting on the theory that I am the 
guilty party, and Mr Blakemore, in going away, is 
really a fugitive from justice.” 

They laughed with him, and presently Mrs Storey, 
chattering something about wine and biscuit for an 
invalid, went out to give some orders, forgetting, 
perhaps, that a bell-rope dangled within reach of 
the chair in which she had been sitting. 

“I came to have a talk with you alone,” Menden- 
hall said promptly as the door closed after Mrs 
Storey. 

“That was very nice of you,” Florence said, 
smiling, and taking a chair nearer to him. “ Have 
you anything especially interesting to say?” 

“That depends upon how you take it. I am 
going to be very blunt about it.” His manner was 
more earnest than she thought it needed to be. 

“You usually are. What you say has the merit 
of being easily understood.” 

He came to the point at once. 

M 


MANDERS 


“I want to know if there is anything between 
you and Mr Blakemore ? ” He leaned forward a 
little, his forearm on his knee. 

“ Decidedly you are blunt about it ! and just a 
bit impudent, too, aren’t you ? Suppose I decline 
to admit your right to ask me such a question ? ” 

“ That would be a sufficient answer,” he said, 
sitting erect again. 

Florence laughed. He was allowing her a glimpse 
of an unsuspected amusing side of his character. 
Jealousy in a strong, well-balanced man of the world 
was an entertaining abnormity. She had not fore- 
seen anything so interesting in the make-up of one 
whom she had always found self-contained and 
complacent. She deployed those feminine artifices 
of attitude and look which are supposed to put 
the reasoning masculine mind at a disadvantage. 
The attack seductive is a manoeuvre to be counter- 
acted only when amour-propre is conscious of a 
social obligation to be respected. Merely personal 
defences amount to nothing, for the man most griev- 
ously abused or most indignantly fired by feminine 
disloyalty or caprice is as wax to flame under the 
propitiatory blandishments of a beloved strategist. 

Florence, quite ignorant of the provocation, felt a 
pleasure in the lowering look with which Menden- 
hall regarded her, and prepared for an agreeable 
skirmish that should make her undisputed mistress 
of the situation. She had not before given much 
thought to the conquest of Mendenhall. 

178 


MANDERS 


u Why do you ask % ” she asked, looking sidewise at 
him and toying with a flower in her belt. 

“ Because I am not the sort of man to use a friend 
as a shuttlecock ! ” 

Not at all the answer expected. It lacked the 
necessary element of personal grievance, and Florence 
was taken aback. She raised her head and her smile 
gave way to a serious, possibly a resentful expression. 
She realised at once that the case was not one of 
simple jealous and corrective pastime. 

“ I don’t think I understand you,” she said. “ Be 
good enough to explain your meaning.” 

“Will you tell me if Mr Blakemore is anything 
more to you than a family friend ? ” 

“ Will you tell me how that question concerns you?” 

“ I gave Blakemore my moonstone at the station ! ” 

“Well?” 

She raised her eyebrows, looking at him, surprised 
and expectant. She seemed in no way overwhelmed. 
There were no indications of detected guiltiness. If 
there was anything more than bewilderment in her 
eyes, it was a glint of sarcasm that seemed to convict 
him of some folly. Nothing more exasperates a man 
than a suspicion that he has made a fool of himself in 
a woman’s eyes at the moment when he thought to 
be most commanding. Mendenhall felt that he had 
made a mistake. 

“Perhaps I haven’t begun in the right way,” he 
said, unwilling to yield, yet speaking in an apologetic 
tone. “ I may have given importance to a trifle, but 
179 


MANDERS 


I came here believing that you had — well, made it 
possible for me to — to insult Mr Blakemore.” 

Florence rose, looked at him an instant and turned 
toward the door. Mendenhall sprang up, stepped 
ahead of her, and held his hand out deprecatingly. 

“Don’t go. Not until I have made myself clear. 
You needn’t forgive me, but at least understand me. 
I can make it plain in a word — I love you.” 

He made no offer to touch her. There was quite 
enough passionate earnestness in his voice, quite 
enough eagerness in his face, but Blakemore and he 
had become friends, and the incident at the station 
was not yet explained. 

“That justifies everything, of course.” She smiled 
as she spoke, and turned back to the chair on which 
she had been sitting. “ Well, what is the offence for 
which you wish to chastise me ? I believe you said 
something about a shuttlecock. Am I one of the 
battledores, or have I been one of the players ? And 
what is the great solemnity attached to the giving 
away of a moonstone ? And please sit down ; I don’t 
like looking up so high.” 

He did as she directed, saying, as he seated himself, 
“ I remember your saying to me that you would never 
marry a man with a moonstone.” 

“ Oh ! I say no end of silly things, Mr Mendenhall. 
I hope you are not ungenerous enough to keep a 
record of them.” 

“And you must have said the same thing to Mr 
Blakemore.” 

180 


MANDERS 


“Possibly. I can’t always be original in my 
remarks. You know there are no new ideas, and 
we must content ourselves with rearrangements of 
old ones. Probably I did not say it to Mr Blakemore 
in precisely the same way as I said it to you.” 

“ I took that for granted, for you were jesting with 
me, but Blakemore’s expression, when I gave him the 
pin, leads me to believe that you have been in earnest 
with him. Have you ? ” 

“ And if I have, what then ? ” 

“ I shall quit Rome to-morrow and send a telegram 
to Blakemore’s boat telling him of the fact.” 

“ How moyen age ! And if I have been no more in 
earnest with him than with you ? ” 

“ I should not think it necessary to go.” 

“ You may as well stay, if you have no other reason 
for going.” 

Her smile was perplexing, but he put an interpre- 
tation on it, and made an impulsive movement to 
take her hand. 

“Do you mean — ” he began, but she stood up 
laughingly, &nd keeping her hand from him. 

“ Don’t let your habit of taking things for granted 
mislead you again, Mr Mendenhall. I have not bid 
you stop in Rome.” 

“ But I have told you that I love you. If you are 
free, if Blakemore has no claim upon you — ” He was 
standing in front of her, and held out his arms as if 
to clasp them about her. 

“Really, Mr Mendenhall,” she said, stepping back 
181 


MANDERS 


from him, “your solicitude for Mr Blakemore seems 
to allow me but a poor place in your opinion. One 
can hardly be flattered by a love that is subordinate 
to a friendship for another man.” 

“You wouldn’t care for a love that took no account 
of honour,” he said urgently, coming nearer to her. 

“ I should doubt the genuineness of a love that took 
account of consequences,” she replied, something of a 
challenge in her eyes. “ I think you are better fitted 
to play the role of a friend than that of the lover.” 

“ Florence ! ” He caught her impetuously by the 
arms. 

“ I hear my mother,” she said, releasing herself, and 
moving away from him. 

The door opened and Mrs Storey entered. Her 
quick, calculating eyes took in the situation at a 
glance. Florence was self-possessed and ready ; 
Mendenhall was disconcerted and awkward. 

“ I have come a little too soon,” Mrs Storey com- 
plained to herself. 


182 


CHAPTER XIV 


An opportunity to renew the conversation so un- 
timely interrupted did not soon present itself ; more 
accurately speaking, Florence carefully avoided or 
nullified the occasions with which fortune and Mrs 
Storey were disposed to favour Mendenhall. If the 
two were left alone together, as inevitably happened 
now and again, Florence launched into such imper- 
tinent talk as would have made the introduction 
of a sentimental subject ridiculous from Mendenhall’s 
point of view. In his opinion, love-making with a 
matrimonial objective was a momentous affair. 
Light-witted campaigning he reserved for quite 
another phase of the passion, and he would have 
imagined himself wanting in delicacy were he to 
arrest mental frivolity with a heart emotion. He 
lent himself wholly to Florence’s moods, but at the 
same time he assured himself that he was making 
progress with her, and that circumstances would 
fashion a suitable hour for the reward of his 
patience. Satisfied that he was obliged to no 

chivalrous restraint in Blakemore’s behalf, he was 
in no haste to have his own amatory status defined, 
finding a peculiar pleasure in the torments of un- 
183 


MANDERS 


certainty. Florence, as a problem in possibilities, 
had, for him, a stimulating fascination that he 
feared might disappear with the establishment of 
a positive understanding between them ; so he 
continued on “dawdling,” as Mrs Storey said to 
herself with some irritation. 

Blakemore had been gone six weeks, and spring 
had come in with a rush that had splashed the young 
verdure of Rome with great patches of white and 
yellow and purple blossom, and filled the soft air 
with the rich perfume of the great stone pines. The 
three had come for a morning stroll through the 
extensive and picturesquely beautiful grounds of the 
Villa Borghese, animated by hundreds of people 
joyous in the sunshine or in the already welcome 
shadows of the trees. There is a secluded fountain 
with great circular stone basin, whose moss-grown rim 
rises waist-high above the ground, its water, dark 
under the shading trees, seeming to have an un- 
fathomable depth. Centuries were necessary, one 
would imagine, to give the fountain its appearance 
of solemn antiquity, but Mendenhall, leaning over 
the basin and swishing his stick in the water, said, — 

“ How like the Italians ! Having destroyed pretty 
much everything that was really old in Rome, they 
construct these shams to trick the imagination.” 

“ But they are not shams,” insisted Florence. 
“ What difference does it make how old or how new 
they are, if they fill the purpose of beauty and fit in 
with the romance of the scene? I’ve no patience 
184 


MANDERS 


with you stupid people who get all your enthusiasms 
out of dates, and affect such a precious scorn of the 
modern. Your enthusiasms are not enthusiasms at 
all, but gushing echoes of somebody else’s worked-up 
extravagances.” 

“ Then I suppose the Coliseum — ” Mendenhall began 
smilingly. 

“ That isn’t the same sort of thing at all,” Florence 
interrupted. “ It is the imposing, awful majesty of 
the thing itself, plus our knowledge of the fearful and 
splendid uses to which it was put, and not its age, that 
inspire and thrill us. If it were a question of age, 
you would better fall down and worship the hill 
behind it, which I dare say is some thousands of years 
older. Do you love the Venus of Milo because it is 
old and battered, or because it is incomparably 
beautiful in spite of being old and battered ? ” 

“Well, for a little of both, I think. I am not sure, but 
I think age is the greatest painter of the beautiful.” 

“ Now that is a platitude. How deep do you think 
this water is ? ” 

“ I don’t know ; I’ll see.” 

He put down his stick until his hand was wrist- 
deep in the water. 

“ There is more of it than I thought,” he laughed ; 
“ I’ll have to undo my cuff.” He began fumbling at 
the links. “ Perhaps you wouldn’t mind doing it for 
me?” 

He held out his dripping hand to her. Mrs Storey 
had wandered some distance beyond them and sat 
185 


MANDERS 


watching a group of picturesquely ragged children 
capering for coppers. 

“ You needn’t take that trouble about it ; let me 
try ; my sleeve is loose.” She shoved her sleeve 
above her elbow and reached for the stick. The arm 
was white and round and good to look upon. 

“ The water is a little chilly,” he said, still retaining 
his hold upon the stick. 

“ So much the better ; getting angry with you has 
made me warm.” 

“ I didn’t know you were angry.” 

“That is because you are not penetrating. It 
always makes me angry when I have to defend my 
opinions.” 

She thrust the stick into the basin and began 
groping for the bottom. 

“ Mercy ! there is no bottom to it ! Pull my sleeve 
up higher — clear to the shoulder. That will do- 
Ooh ! how delightful it is ! I’d like to plunge in all 
'over. What a good thing it must have been to be a 
nymph. This fountain was undoubtedly made for 
nymphs. That is why there is no bottom to it ; if 
there is, I can’t reach it. Is your arm much longer 
than mine ? ” 

“ Perhaps I would better find you a longer stick.” 

“ Do. Will it matter if I lose hold of your stick ? 
I came near doing so.” 

“ It will come to the top if you do.” 

He went off to find a suitable rod, and she began 
amusing herself thrusting the stick down and letting 
1 86 


MANDERS 


it shoot up of its own buoyancy, becoming childishly 
absorbed in a pastime to which excitement was 
added by the wilful attempts of the stick to come 
up beyond her reach. 

Mendenhall came back with a handful of long 
grasses. “ Here we are,” he said, putting them down 
on the rim of the basin. 

“ What in the world is that for ? ” 

“ I’ll tie these blades of grass together, make a line, 
and with a pebble at the end we’ll have a first-class 
plummet.” 

“ Really, I believe you are clever.” 

“Well, you’d better stop playing in that water. 
Take my handkerchief and dry your arm.” 

“ I suppose mamma would have a fit if she saw me.” 

She took the handkerchief he held to her and 
began drying her arm a,s he set about making his 
sounding-line. Suddenly she uttered an exclamation 
of alarm. Mendenhall looked up. 

“ What’s the matter ? ” 

“I have lost one of my rings — the one Walter 
gave me.” 

“The one ‘Walter’ gave you!” he repeated, stop- 
ping still and looking hard at her. 

She had spoken unconsciously, but his manner 
restored her balance. 

“ I should have said lent me ; it is his, not mine,” 
she replied easily, but there was more than the usual 
colour in her cheeks, and her eyes were looking on the 
finger where the ring had been. “And I was just 
187 


MANDERS 


going to send it back to him.” She laughed a little 
nervously, pulling down her sleeve. 

“ So you were engaged to Walter Blakemore ? ” he 
said, with his teeth set, speaking his thoughts aloud 
rather than addressing the words to her. 

She looked up indignantly, but his face frightened 
her. She had never seen that sort of anger in a 
man’s face before. 

“ You have dared to trifle with me, tempting me to 
play the part of a blackguard ! ” he went on brutally, 
judging her. “ What kind of woman are you, then ? 
There is your mother ; you do not need an escort.” 
He was turning away. 

Her eyes blazed. An an-er as great as his own 
flamed and paled in her face. His stick lay on the 
basin ledge. She snatched it up. 

“You coward !” she exclaimed, and struck him over 
the shoulder. Instantly the stick fell from her hand, 
and shame took the place of anger in her cheeks. She 
covered her face with her hands and leaned down 
against the wall of the fountain, silent, but trembl- 
ing with the intensity of her emotions. 

Nothing could have appealed to Mendenhall as did 
that impulsively, passionately-struck but forceless 
blow. The fact that it outraged all his ideas of 
feminine character and reserve made the piteousness 
of it the only thing upon which his mind could take 
hold, and he was conscious of a rush of penitent 
sympathy with the girl whom his savage contempt 
had beaten down in this way. He looked about him. 

1 83 


MANDERS 


Fortunately there were no spectators of the incident. 
The nearest and only visible persons were Mrs Storey 
on the distant bench, and the children she was watch- 
ing. He, was glad of that for her sake. He hesitat- 
ingly, timidly put his hand upon her arm. 

“ Don’t touch me,” she said, but as if the touch 
were a physical hurt rather than an indignity. 

He withdrew his hand, saying in a low voice and 
pleadingly,— 

“ If I did not love you I could not so have insulted 
you.” 

She made no response, and he stood looking down 
upon her, waiting until she should lift her head. He 
entered upon a self-arraignment. What particular 
virtue in him gave him the right to judge this woman 
harshly? How came it that he assumed to have 
standards of honour and responsibility so much above 
those of men in general ? Was it, after all, loyalty 
to principle and not a phase of egotism that made him 
resent her “trifling” with him? Was not his anger 
due to disappointed love more than to shock to 
those nice scruples concerning man’s obligation to 
man which he had always imagined he possessed in 
eminent degree ? Love was a free agent ; and if love 
came to him, what business was it of his to inquire 
if someone else were the loser ? Did the fact that 
another man loved this woman constitute an in- 
violable claim upon her before she had really sur- 
rendered her freedom of choice ? What was an 
engagement more than an agreement to consider the 
189 


MANDERS 


advisability of entering into a formal and definite 
contract? Why should he ascribe sanctity to that 
which the rest of the world regarded merely as a con- 
ditional convenience ? Why should he not strive for 
a prize that was still a challenge to fair competition ? 
Quixotism s had nothing to do with real men and 
women, with the actualities of practical life — and 
love was to seize upon its own wherever and when- 
ever it could. 

“ I was a fool,” he said suddenly, bending over her. 
“I was mad with jealousy. Punish me, but forgive 
me.” 

She raised her head, drawing her hands down over 
her cheeks to dry away the traces of tears, and stood 
before him, no longer either ashamed or angry, but 
calm, and he thought he read in the pallid and pained 
expression of her face an admission that gave him heart. 

“ You ask what kind of woman I am,” she began. 

“Don’t speak of that,” he interrupted protestingly. 
“Nothing you can say can make me feel more like 
a cad. I was a beast. Forgive me.” 

“I will tell you,” she went on, as if he had not 
spoken. “ I was in no way bound to Walter Blake- 
more. We were not engaged. That ring had no 
such significance. You have made it a betrothal 
ring. Get it for me.” 

She turned away and went in the direction of her 
mother, leaving him disconcerted and blank, because 
of her manner rather than her words. 

He watched her crossing the space between him 
190 


MANDERS 


and Mrs Storey, now in the sunlight, now in the 
shadow, and thought how little the careless grace of 
her movements indicated any perturbation of heart or 
mind. He saw by her actions when she joined her 
mother that she was telling of the loss of the ring, 
explaining why he remained at the fountain. Mrs 
Storey seemed of a mind to come to him, but Florence 
dissuaded her. Mrs Storey fluttered her handker- 
chief at him encouragingly, and the two went down 
the little path to the road as Mendenhall whistled 
and held up his stick to signal the playing children. 
Several boys came running to him. 

“ Can any of you dive ? ” he asked. 

The boys exchanged glances of much inquisitive- 
ness, the question struck them so oddly. Foreign 
visitors to Rome, especially English and American 
ones, are always enigmatical to the young bandits 
of the streets, they seem to have such peculiar ideas 
of entertainment. It was like this big, blond man to 
want to see them tumbling in this fountain against 
which he was leaning. 

“Yes,” said the tallest and slimmest of the boys, 
“we can all dive, but we are not going to — not in 
there,” grinning sagaciously and pointing into the 
fountain. 

“ But I have dropped a ring in here, and I’ll give 
you a gold piece if you get it.” 

“ They would arrest me,” said the boy, tempted by 
the offer, yet reluctant to let cupidity lead him into 
danger. 

iqi 


MANDERS 


“A whole twenty lire piece,” urged Mendenhall, 
showing the coin. 

Two or three began flinging off their rags, but the 
tall boy was the first to climb upon the rim of the 
huge basin and plunge in where Mendenhall directed. 
After a number of unsuccessful efforts, during which 
the others clamoured to be let into competition, the 
ring was brought up with a handful of leafy deposit 
and triumphantly held out to Mendenhall. 

Later in the day Florence received the jewel with 
the message, “ When may I see you ? ” 

The messenger brought back the answer, — 

‘‘When I send for you; but I thank you for re- 
covering my ring.” 

“ My ring ! ” he repeated, emphasising the pronoun 
in an unamiable way. “ That is the end of it, then ! 
I am to be sent for when I am wanted ! Oh ! very 
well ! very well ! ” 

But he sat down at his table and began writing. 
At the end of the four pages he stopped to read over 
what he had written. He then tore the paper into 
ribbons, kicked over his chair and lighted a cigar. A 
few inhalations helped him to an orderly train of 
thought, and he planted himself before one of the 
windows overlooking the street to follow it out. 

It was not a very pleasant train of thought, but he 
was greatly annoyed when a knock at the door inter- 
rupted it. A valet came in to say that a gentleman 
had called to see the signor, and had sent up his 
card, 

IQ2 


MANDERS 


“ I am not in to any one,” said Mendenhall. 

But he glanced at the card the valet had handed 
him. It bore the name of the Count Vasselli. 

“ Humph. You may show the gentleman up.” 

He smiled as he recalled the incident at Orteviti’s 
in the night when he and Blakemore had been way- 
laid. 

“ What brings the old imbecile around at this 
late day?” 

Count Vasselli came in with a curious mingling 
of dignity and affability — that cautiously polite 
manner in which one greets an acquaintance of 
whose identity he is uncertain. 

Mendenhall received him good-humouredly. 

“You are quite well again, Mr Mendenhall?” 

“ Quite well, I thank you, Count.” 

“They tell me you had a very serious affair?” 

“ Oh ! it could easily have been worse.” 

“Do you know, sir, I was much amused when 
my friends came back from your hotel to tell me 
you were dying, the morning I sent them to you 
with my compliments ? ” 

“ Does a man’s dying always amuse you, Count ? ” 

“ Oh ! Maria, not at all ! not at all ! It was the 
idea of sending a challenge to a dead man that I 
found so comical. It put me into such a good 
humour that I immediately wrote you out an in- 
vitation to dine with me ; but just as I was hand- 
ing it to my servant, I remembered that it was no 

easier for a dead man to eat than to fight, and I 
N 


MANDERS 


had another good laugh. I have to thank you for 
two of the pleasantest half hours I have had in 
years — two of the very pleasantest in years.” 

“I am sure I am very glad if I have been able 
to drift a little sunlight into your life, Count. 
And in what way can I contribute to your further 
happiness ? ” 

“I should have called upon you before, but IVe 
been in Naples. I returned only yesterday morn- 
ing. In the first instance, I wish to tell you that 
I forgive you.” 

Mendenhall bowed with impressiveness. 

“ A gracious act, worthy of your nobility, Count.” 

“ In the second instance, I wish you to dine with 
me to meet some friends on Thursday night.” 

“ I am very sorry that it is impossible ; but I 
leave Rome to-morrow.” 

“Leave Rome to-morrow! Not to be thought 
of ! You must postpone your going until after 
my dinner!” 

“I cannot do that.” 

“ You mean you won’t do that ! ” said the 
Count rising, half disposed to be irritated by the 
decision of Mendenhall’s tone. “Shall I take your 
answer as a renewal of the affront you put upon 
me?” 

Mendenhall rose gravely, and said, with a 
deferential gesture, and looking down to hide the 
smile in his eyes, — 

“I do not believe you will do that, my dear 
194 


MANDERS 


Count Vasselli, when I tell you that the interests 
of a lady are involved.” 

The Count was pacified at once. He bowed 
permissively. 

“That gives the matter quite another aspect. I 
excuse you, but regretfully. However, my carriage 
is at the door. You must drive with me. You 
cannot refuse me that satisfaction.” 

“It will be an honour as well as a pleasure, 
Count.” 

“Much pleasanter than being run through with 
a sword, eh, Mr Mendenhall?” 

The Count, in excellent agreement with himself, 
perked his head jauntily, and regarded Mendenhall 
with a smile of good-natured indulgence. 

“I am persuaded, Count, that you would be a 
most chivalrous adversary. I have been told that 
your courtesy is so much greater than your resent- 
ments, that, though you have been principal in a 
score of duels, you have invariably forgiven rather 
than injure your opponent.” 

“I am peppery, Mr Mendenhall, and take offence 
easily, but I am charitable, and if I am quick in 
wrath, I am not slow to make allowance for the 
imperfections of my fellows. Besides, as soon as 
I find that a man will fight, I know that he is 
worth having as a friend.” 

Count Vasselli was, indeed, a jest of the clubs, 
for the headlong excitability of temper that hurried 
him into difficulties, that, threatening to terminate in 
i95 


MANDERS 


bloodshed, were usually dissolved in champagne. He 
had exchanged cards with half his acquaintances, 
but had never got beyond striking sparks from a 
rapier. 

They took their places in the Count’s open landau 
and were soon in the going and coming stream of 
carriages, which every afternoon moves leisurely 
along the Corso, and up into the Villa Borghese and 
back again in fashionable monotony. The Count, 
who was incessantly bowing, seemed vastly pleased 
that Mendenhall was fairly active in that respect, 
and took the trouble to felicitate him upon having 
dwelt so profitably in Rome. When the Queen 
drove by, the Count arose to his feet to bow with 
becoming ceremony, but he was not wholly inatten- 
tive to his companion. Resuming his seat he stared 
at Mendenhall in angry surprise. 

“You did not salute her majesty!” he exclaimed. 

Mendenhall had not seen the Queen. His eyes 
had been occupied with the occupants of the second 
carriage beyond. His mind was engaged with 
thoughts of Florence, and he had recognised her 
and her mother some distance away, so the royal 
carriage passed as an unimportant factor of the 
procession. His gaze was eagerly fixed on Florence’s 
face. He saw her look in his direction, but she 
gave no sign of recognition. When they came nearer, 
just when the Queen was passing the Count’s carriage, 
she looked at him a second time, and his hand 
went instinctively to his hat, but before he could 
196 


MANDERS 


lift it, her eyes were turned in the opposite direc- 
tion. A moment after the Count was railing at him, 
and she was passing by within reach of his hand 
should he stretch it out. Mrs Storey bobbed her 
head and smiled, and pantomimed to say that 
Mendenhall should be in the carriage with them. 

“Don’t get into a passion, my dear Count, I’ll 
make amends. When we pass her majesty again 
I’ll stand up with you.” 

The Count beamed upon him, and laid a hand 
familiarly upon his knee. 

“ You noticed it, eh ? “ They laugh at me a good 
deal for that. But I can’t help it. It is automatic. 
I don’t do it. I’ve found out what does it, though 
— it is the combination ! You know queens hardly 
ever look like queens : Margherita does. And then 
you seldom see a really beautiful queen or princess. 
Margherita is beautiful. There you have it; it is 
the union of Queen and Beauty to which I rise ; 
and I assure you, my dear gentleman, it is altogether 
outside of my control. Absolutely! And I’m glad 
of it!” 

Mendenhall went to a concert that evening to 
“think it out.” He cared little for music, and 
could scarcely distinguish between a Chopin nocturne 
and a Hungarian rhapsody, being as indifferent to 
one as to the other. Music was for him, he said, a 
besom to clear the cob-webs out of his mind and give 
thought a chance. Like Tennyson’s girl with the 
water-jug, he “heard and not heard,” his thoughts 
i97 


MANDERS 


having nothing to do with the sound of over-flow. 
He fancied his ideas were something like the acrobats 
at a varieties hall, who can only be brought into 
action by a flourish of fiddles. At any rate, he could 
never pull himself together, intellectually, half so well 
as when sitting under the influence of a good 
orchestra; and if he left the place ignorant of any 
and every feature of the programme, it was at least 
with his mind made up what to do in the matter 
debated. 

Returned to his hotel he wrote a number of notes, 
one to Mrs Storey, packed his belongings, and by 
noon the next day was whirling along, if that may 
be said of Italian railway locomotion, on his way 
to London. 

And that day Florence said to her mother, 
“Don’t you think Rome is getting to be a bore?” 


198 


CHAPTER XV 


“ Monte Carlo, April 5. 

“Dear Walter, — We are, as you may see, inching 
our way back to Paris, though we haven’t any idea 
when we shall get there. For my own part, I am in 
no hurry to quit this place. It is enchanting, and I 
am only sorry that you have been here, for I feel 
quite equal to a descriptive rhapsody that would stun 
you. But you need not conclude that it is the pris- 
matic wickedness of the life here to which I have 
fallen an eager victim. It is the scene; though, of 
course, people are necessary to the perfection of a 
scene, and, of course , at Monte Carlo one must dance 
to the pipers, and that means’ a soupgon of some kind 
of naughtiness. Naturally one does not slight the 
Casino. We have become habitues of the most de- 
termined order, though we do not always play — it 
is so expensive. 

“Mamma had what they call a run of luck the 
other day, and at one time was about 4000 francs 
ahead of the game (I believe that is the proper 
phrase). She had, however, some of that vaulting 
ambition which overleaps itself (a Shakespearianism 
which I never could understand), and came to grief 
?99 


MANDERS 


in her efforts to win 10,000. Between us we lost 
1500 francs, though mamma insists that it was a 
loss of 5500 francs, for she will count in the 4000 
she had for a little while. Now we are economizing 
to make up that extra. Isn’t that like mamma ? 

“ You ask me a great many questions in your letters. 
Questions requiring an answer are not legitimate to 
a friendly correspondence. They impose an annoy- 
ing responsibility upon one of having the letters at 
hand to be consulted every time one has finished 
writing a paragraph. It is an abuse of good-nature. 
A correspondence does not mean answering letters, 
it means exchanging them; otherwise it is in the 
nature of a business transaction. I don’t keep your 
letters about me ; indeed, I don’t keep them at all. 
They charge for every pound of luggage in Italy, and 
they allow but little in France. I remember two of 
your last questions, however, and don’t mind answer- 
ing them. Mr Mendenhall is not with us. He has 
not been for some time. I don’t know where he is. 
He probably has a reason for not having answered 
your letter. I should think you would express your 
wonder to him and not to me. That is the more 
sensible thing to do, isn’t it? 

“The other question is not so easily answered, 
because it has suspicious elements. I see no reason 
for calling on the Warleys or the Manderses if I 
‘stop long enough in Paris.’ Your interest in them 
may be commendable without being weighty, as a 
reason for my being interested in them, I daresay 
200 


MANDERS 


the Manders’s boy merits all you say of him, and he 
may be the paragon of prodigies for anything I know 
to the contrary ; but as I am a woman, I claim a 
woman’s privilege of suspecting that it is the mother 
rather than the child from which your zeal draws 
fire. Don’t imagine that I object in the least to that 
phase of it. I have no false notions as to the pre- 
ponderance of Josephs in the social economy. To be 
downright candid with you, I’ve no great opinion of 
Josephs. But I do very decidedly object to being 
used as an instrument for stirring other people’s 
chestnuts about over the coals. You need not feel 
called upon to reiterate your eulogies of the saintli- 
ness of Madame Manders. I take all that for granted. 
I allow that she is the one unblemished sheep in the 
Parisian fold, and that I might do well to bear 
frankincense and myrrh to her and her boy; but I 
am a Pharisee, and attach a great deal of importance 
to appearance, confessing my inability to grasp the 
spirit of things. I might have been content with 
giving you a simpler reason for answering your 
question in the negative, for, as a matter of fact, we 
are not to stop in Paris at all ; but I don’t care to 
have you entertain an erroneous idea as to the ex- 
tent of my gullibility. A timely correction of your 
opinion may save you from future embarrassments, 
it being my observation that men are not what you 
might call geometrically exact liars. Their terms 
do not observe a common ratio of progression, and 
they are always betrayed by an excess. 

201 


MANDERS 


“ No ; we shall not stop in Paris more than a fort- 
night. We are going straight to London, where we 
expect to arrive about the middle of May. We 
shall stop there until the 23d of June, and then — 
you are the first to receive this important and 
really momentous intelligence — we are to sail for 
home! You are probably not as much surprised 
as you ought to be, for papa wrote in his last 
letter (a desperately private one, which I have not 
yet shown to mamma) that he had told you of his 
intention to urge me to persuade mamma to come 
home. My persuasion consisted in declaring the 
fact of my determination to sail in June even if I 
had to hire a chaperon. You see I do have spasms 
of filial sober-mindedness which might answer for 
sympathy with the dear, stupid man ; and I 
authorise you to soothe him with this bit of in- 
formation, for I shall not have time to write two 
letters this week. 

“Perhaps I should tell you before winding up 
this jumble of nonsense that I have committed 
what you may think an unpardonable indiscretion. 
Circumstances, which I do not think it necessary 
to recount, have made it advantageous for me to 
call your ring a betrothal ring. Though, as I 
have let you know before this, I look upon engage- 
ments as a kind of impeachment of a woman’s 
character, marking her off as something set aside 
for future consideration, or taken on trial, I am 
willing to let you hold an option on me until we 
202 


MANDERS 


have a chance to talk the matter over. This gives 
you a fine opportunity to ‘decline with thanks,’ 
but if you do anything so unimaginative and pro- 
vincial, I shall have too much pity for you to be 
angry. I understand well enough that this amounts 
to a proposal for your hand, but as I have not the 
remotest idea of marrying you, you may put any 
construction you please upon my desire to make a 
temporary convenience of you. 

“Papa says you are having a great deal of 
trouble settling up your father’s estate, and that 
times are hard. Well, that may give you a taste 
for practical affairs, and cure you of your passion 
for dabbling in oils. After looking upon miles and 
miles of canvases painted by nobody but cataloguers 
knows who, I have come to the conclusion that the 
painting industry is overdone; and I would like to 
see you take up with something in which you could 
amount to something. Why don’t you go in for 
politics ? It isn’t the most reputable business in the 
world, I believe, but it does admit of quick personal 
distinction, if one has an accommodating conscience. 
But you, I fear, belong to the accountable type of 
men. Good-bye. Florence.” 


“ Paris, May 2. 

“ Dear Mr Blakemore, — Is your arithmetic bad ? 
or have you forgotten my terms ? Your last cheque 
was for 200 francs too much, and I return you 
203 


MANDERS 


that amount enclosed. It is true you wrote of 
extras ; but there are no extras. 

“ I believe there is a good deal that I ought to 
write about to you, but I am such a wretched 
letter writer, it is very likely I won’t know how to 
say it. In the first place, Manders is doing so well, 
that I begin to think he needs a better teacher. 
He takes to music as most boys take to mischief. 
I cannot keep him restrained, and he makes me feel 
that I am not up to him. He is not like a boy of 
eight at all. He seems twelve at least. His tech- 
nique, of course, is not good, and he does not read 
new music very well, but he can play almost any- 
thing he hears played, and you will hardly credit 
me when I say that he improvises wonderfully. 
The objection is, that he prefers ‘playing out of 
his head,’ as he puts it. It is amusing to see how 
much in awe of him Mrs Manders has come to be. 
She does a great deal of sewing now, and she 
always sits in the room with her work when I 
am giving him his lesson, but I notice that her 
work stops, and she sits listening to him with a 
mixture of tears and smiles, as if she were afraid 
of something, and yet happy too. 

“ I wrote to you, did I not, that Mrs Manders has a 
troublesome cough ? In my opinion it is even worse 
than it was, but when I suggest that she ought to see 
a doctor, she laughs and declares that it is nothing 
but a tickling in her throat, and that doctors are 
only a foolish luxury like carriages and lap-dogs 
204 


MANDERS 


To be sure I don’t think it is anything serious 
myself, but it is just as well to stop a cough in 
time. I have come to have a great respect for Mrs 
Manders. I never knew anyone so sweet-tempered 
and so always sunny. And she is the most industri- 
ous creature. There is never a sign of disorder in 
her rooms, and she keeps herself and Manders always 
en dimanche, as the French say. I don’t know how 
she manages, for I cannot believe she is earning a 
great deal now, though she does some posing in 
addition to her sewing. She has changed my ideas 
about models. I used to think that none of them 
were respectable, and I sometimes doubted, in spite 
of what you said to my father, if Mrs Manders could 
be strictly proper. I know better now, and perhaps 
I should apologise to you and to her for ever having 
had opinions without some facts to go with them. 

“This morning we had a call from Miss Florence 
Storey, who said she came at your request to ask 
about Mrs Manders and Manders. I offered to take 
her with me to see them, but she said she only had a 
few minutes to spare, and her mother was waiting 
outside in the carriage. I liked Miss Storey very 
much, and my father quite lost his heart to her. I 
told her everything I could about Mrs Manders, and 
finally she said, ‘ If it isn’t very far, possibly I have 
got time to go with you to see them.’ So they took 
me with them in the carriage, but I got the impres- 
sion that Mrs Storey was not pleased. She stayed in 
the carriage. 


205 


MANDERS 


I thought at first that Miss Storey had rather a 
cold and patronising way with Mrs Manders, but it 
did not last long. Mrs Manders seemed to know all 
about Miss Storey, and was so pleased with the call 
that she seemed a new being. You must not smile 
at me when I say that I thought she seemed grateful, 
though I don’t know why she should have been. I 
am not a very intelligent observer. At first the two 
women regarded each other as curiosities, as it struck 
me, but I am sure they had good opinions of one 
another when they parted. I stopped to give Manders 
his lesson and let Miss Storey go down alone. After 
she had gone Mrs Manders, with more gaiety than 
I have ever seen in her, said to Manders, — 

“ * Come, my little one, before you begin your lesson 
we’ll sing one of our old songs together,’ and sat 
down at the piano. Do you know that Mrs Manders 
would sing well if she had some lessons? But she 
stopped in the very midst of the second verse and 
turned suddenly to me, saying, — 

“‘Is it really true, Miss Warley, that you are 
teaching Manders just for the love of it?’ 

“I am finding it very hard to keep up these 
deceptions, Mr Blakemore, and some day I am 
going to be found out, I know. I don’t see any 
reason for them. Mrs Manders is sensible enough, 
I am sure, to appreciate what it means to Manders 
to have educational advantages which she cannot 
afford to give him, and I don’t think she is too proud 
to accept benefits that Manders may some day be 
206 


MANDERS 


able to repay with interest. Really now, is there 
any reason for this secrecy? 

“ I haven’t written such a long letter since I was a 
schoolgirl, and I daresay I have left out everything 
that I started out to tell you. You must make 
allowances for me. — Sincerely, 

“Matilda Warley” 


207 


CHAPTER XVI 


' Four father has lost his senses ! It is madness, 
downright madness, to think of wanting us to come 
back to New Orleans in the blaze of summer! And 
who knows what we might have accomplished this 
season in London ! Everything was in your favour ! 
And yet you were as obstinate as he was imbecile ! 
As if you didn’t know that your father’s perpetual 
whining about hard times and the tightness of the 
money market is only so much professional cant! 
And here we are blistering, and the air getting 
hotter and hotter with every turn of the engine 
wheels. I shouldn’t be at all surprised if we were 
running headlong into yellow fever or the cholera ! 
And I should not object in the least. It would 
serve him right ! ” 

This was the frame of mind in which Mrs Storey 
returned to her spouse, and which they may excuse 
who have approached New Orleans by train under 
the mid-day glare of a July sun. Railway service 
in the South at that time was far from ideal, the 
coaches being uncomfortable and “stuffy,” and ill- 
protected against sifting cinders and penetrating 
dust by badly-cased windows. The managers of 
208 


MANDERS 


roads were apparently governed by the opinion 
that their mission in life was to do what they 
could for the annoyance of their not too numerous 
patrons. It was as if the train service were an 
additional punishment imposed upon the Southerners 
for having allowed themselves to be whipped out in 
the war, and reduced to a degree of poverty to which 
anything above the merest decencies of travel would 
be a criminal pampering. Negro equality, a legal 
fact though a practical myth, had its influence upon 
the governing orders, and before “through trains*' 
between the North and the South came into use in 
obedience to the demands of in-rushing Northern 
enterprise, the aristocrat of the plantation days 
was forced to support his impoverished dignity by 
placarding one half of a common coach : “ This 
portion reserved for whites.” 

Conditions had not so greatly improved for Mrs 
Storey’s benefit that she could be much blamed if 
a sleepless night and an early morning change to a 
comfortless and hot day coach had prepared her 
temper for the mid-day eruption. Florence herself was 
dispirited enough to offer no defence of her father. 
She even sighed a little wearily as she said, — 

“ Well, please don’t add anything to the heat, 
mamma. If we must be martyrs, let us try to be 
Christians.” 

But New Orleans was not as intolerable as they 
had anticipated. The Gulf breezes, taking account 
of Mrs Storey’s coming, had blown in one of those 
o 


MANDERS 


sudden downpours of purifying rain which turn 
the streets into temporary rivers and cool the air 
deliciously. The water runs knee deep while the 
downpour continues, but five minutes after it ceases 
there is nothing but the moist stones and the fresh, 
sweet air to tell of the sudden flood. 

The carriage span of large black mules still reeked 
of their drenching as Mrs Storey and Florence 
were handed into the old-fashioned barouche that 
had been the family carriage as long as Florence 
could remember, but the rain had stopped and the 
sky was blue. Released from the train, and joy- 
ously welcomed by her agreeably deferential hus- 
band, and fanned by a breeze that smelled of wet 
roses, Mrs Storey was enough appeased to be 
amiable. She even held out her hand to the coach- 
man, who had been a “born slave” of Mr Storey’s 
father, and had wisely refused to avail himself of 
the freedom he did not know how to use. 

“We are back again, you see, Uncle Jerry,” she 
said, as he took her hand in the proprietory way 
common to the old family servants in the South. 

“ Lawd ! I can’t believe ye, Miss Leshy ! But I’se 
right glad you is ! An’ Miss Flaw’nce, how you do 
look, honey ! Them f urrin parts agrees wi’ you folks, 
Miss Leshy — dey do, indeed ! ” 

Mrs Storey’s name was Felicia, and she was “ Miss 
Leshy ” to the blacks, from pickaninnies to ancients of 
Jerry’s years. 

In the drive to the house in St Charles Street, 


210 


MANDERS 


there were exchanges of glances between Florence 
and her father that conveyed no small amount of 
intelligence from one to the other. Mr Storey was 
saying in this way all that the lively and voluble 
presence of Mrs Storey prevented him putting into 
articulate speech. Interpreted, the conversation was 
to this effect, — 

“ I believe we perfectly understand each other, my 
dear ? ” 

“Perfectly,” Florence replied. 

“You had some trouble to bring it about, I 
suppose ? ” 

“Well, rather.” 

“ I’m ever so much obliged to you. It meant some 
sacrifice on your part, too, didn’t it, my girl ? ” 

“ That is hardly worth mentioning.” 

“I’m afraid this good nature of your mother’s 
doesn’t go very deep.” 

“ I wouldn’t put too much confidence in it.” 

“ I dread thinking of my first hour alone with her.” 

“You ought to be pretty well used to it by this 
time.” 

“ Can’t you manage to stick by me ? I’d rather 
have it out in your presence.” 

“ I’ll do what I can for you.” 

“ The fact, is my dear Flo, I had to do it. Things 
are worse than you think.” 

Florence found that she had accumulated a large 
reserve of sympathy with her father in the drive 
home, and when she got into the house she did what 
21 1 


MANDERS 


she had neglected to do at the station — threw her 
arms around his neck and kissed him. 

“ Thank you, Flo,” he whispered in her ear, “ I was 
feeling the need of that.” 

It was not until the evening, an hour after dinner, 
that the interview, for which Mr Storey had been 
fortifying himself apprehensively during a month, 
was unlimbered against him. Left to himself, and 
cheered by the delusion that the ladies would busy 
themselves with unpacking, Mr Storey stretched 
himself on the leather-covered lounge in the library, 
his stone jar of crumbed Virginia leaf on the table 
beside him, his mahogany-coloured, long-stemmed 
meerschaum pipe alight in his mouth, a well-fed 
calm shining from his half-closed eyes, a canopy 
of blue-grey film wavering in soothing assurance 
above his head. As the tranquillising influence of 
the tobacco increased, his thoughts, less and less 
anxious, drifted into a languorous reverie which 
was very like unto sleep when Mrs Storey came 
briskly into the room. 

“ Oh ! here you are. I thought you had gone out. 
Am I disturbing you ? ” 

“Not in the least, Felicia,” Mr Storey responded, 
as cordially as one sharply aroused from drowsiness 
may. “ I am only too glad to see you,” rising to a 
sitting posture as he spoke. “ Sit down by me and 
tell me what you’ve been doing since the last time 
we had a chat together.” 

“I am not in the reminiscent vein this evening, 
212 


MANDERS 


Henry. My interest now is in finding out what 
you meant by breaking up my plans at the very time 
they looked the most promising.” 

“ Your plans for what, my dear ? ” 

“Don’t play the ingenu , Henry. But I’ll spare 
you the necessity of floundering about among your 
pitiable subterfuges. My eyes were opened when 
that basket of flowers came from Walter Blakemore 
this afternoon. So you entered into a conspiracy 
with that young gentleman to play upon Florence’s 
sympathies and make a fool of me? Exactly like 
you ! I only wonder that I was too stupid to see 
through your miserable scheme in time to defeat it. 
But your triumph shall be short-lived, that I promise 
you; and if Walter Blakemore comes here to-night — ” 

“ He is not in New Orleans.” 

“ But the flowers ? ” 

“Telegraphed. Come now, Felicia, let’s have a 
sensible talk. You are on the wrong track entirely. 
The whole thing in a nutshell is that we’ve got to 
retrench.” 

“Retrench! I hate the word, Henry. It is ill- 
sounding and ill - meaning and mean - spirited. I 
never knew a babbler about retrenchment who had 
anything to retrench. That is the cant phrase of 
cheap politicians who are struggling to get their 
hands into the public purse.” 

“My dear,” Mr Storey broke in with more than 
his usual firmness, and putting his pipe on the table, 
“you may choose your own words, but here are the 
213 


MANDERS 


facts. Everything has gone against me this year, 
both here and in New York. I’m a million out, and I 
have reached bed rock. I haven’t five thousand left 
in bank, and unless there comes a turn in the New 
York wheat market pretty soon I’m a ruined man.” 

“ Ruined ! ” cried Mrs Storey, aghast. “ Does that 
mean that you have lost Florence’s fortune, too ? ” 

Mr Storey looked at his wife wonderingly, a pained 
smile coming slowly to his lips. Use Florence’s 
money in speculation ? Cheat the girl whose future 
security and happiness were his only ambition ? He 
picked up his pipe and relighted it without replying. 

Mrs Storey quite understood, and was in a measure 
comforted. There was nothing so very dreadful to 
fear as long as Florence had half a million. Her 
asperity returned upon her. 

“ What business had you fooling around the New 
York wheat markets? You were a cotton and 
tobacco broker, and knew what you were about as 
long as you stuck to your proper vocation ! Why 
couldn’t you let good enough alone ? ” 

“ I should have been very glad to do that if you 
had been satisfied with ‘good enough,’ my dear 
Felicia. But you can’t keep a house in Washington, 
a villa at Newport, and do the fashionable in Europe 
on a cotton broker’s income. You made speculation 
necessary, my dear.” 

“ I made it necessary ! I beg of you not to try to 
put the responsibility for your business shortcomings 
upon my shoulders, Mr Storey. If you were weak 
214 


MANDERS 


enough to make a fool of yourself, do have the manli- 
ness to bear the blame of it. I am not the head of 
the family ! ” 

“It cost us one hundred and ten thousand dollars 
to live last year, and I made less than fifty thousand 
dollars. 

“Well?” 

“ I am going to keep our living inside of my income 
after this.” 

“ And that means — ? ” 

“The sale of the Washington and Newport 
properties, and economy at home.” 

Florence appeared in the doorway. 

“May I come in ? ” she asked. 

“Yes,” said Mrs Storey; “ I think we need your 
advice.” 

A family conference ensued, the first of the kind 
in which Florence had part. The situation was 
reviewed in detail, and the embarrassed condition of 
Mr Storey’s affairs made clear. 

“ I am glad of it,” Florence said at the conclusion 
of the summing up. “It is going to give us the 
chance to show some common sense and live like 
intelligent people. I am tired enough of trotting 
around like a prize animal looking for the highest 
bidder, and I welcome the opportunity to get out of 
the cattle market. I shouldn’t be at all sorry if 
you went quite to smash, papa. We might live 
happily together then, and we would at least know 
what sort of friends we have.” 

215 


MANDERS 


Deserted by Florence in this way, Mrs Storey, 
crowding back the rebellious tears sent up by 
humiliated pride, confessed to having lived in vain, 
and avowed that mothers who give thought and 
heart-beats solely to the consummation of brilliant 
plans for a daughter’s future are typified in history 
by Niobe, whom grief turned to stone after an access 
of maternal disappointment. 

In reality Mrs Storey was not an unreasonable 
woman, and though she held to the opinion that Mr 
Storey was altogether too radical and arbitrary in 
his calculations of things necessary to be done, she 
acquiesced in the plans for the future with a certain 
grace when she was convinced that Florence was in 
earnest about wanting to settle down quietly for a 
time. It was agreed that the Washington and 
Newport places should be disposed of, that the 
Charles Street house should be kept for the winter 
residence, and that this summer should be passed 
quietly at one of the Gulf coast towns to which New 
Orleans people resorted in the hot months. 

In the course of a week they decided on Balouis, and 
selected an old-fashioned, one-storey, rambling plant- 
ation house backed by a grove of live oaks, having a 
rose garden of rich variety at one side, the climbing 
roses embowering one wing of the house, and with a 
close line of tall flowering oleanders screening the 
front lawn from the road which followed the wind- 
ings of the bay. Florence had chosen the house, be- 
ing curiously attracted to it by the name “ Waldmeer ” 
210 


MANDERS 


done in white-painted horseshoes diagonally across 
the street gate, and it was her privilege to furnish it 
from town in accordance with her own ideas, which 
made much of white muslin curtains, cool yellow 
mattings, rattan chairs and divans, plentifully 
supplied with light cushions, white-framed, delicate 
water-colours, and hammocks swung across the 
porches or between neighbourly trees that over- 
shadowed the house. 

“ Where did you get such notions of virginal 
simplicity ? ” Mrs Storey asked a little satirically 
but not too much displeased. 

“ Well, this is the first time I’ve felt at home in ten 
years,” Mr Storey declared heartily on his first even- 
ing in the house after it was “ settled.” 

Mr Storey came the fifty miles from New Orleans 
by the late afternoon train every day, being met at 
the station by the ladies with the mules and carriage, 
for the drive over the smooth, shell road, along the fine 
sweep of the bay, was the evening recreation of the 
fortunate summer residents of the village, who insisted 
on a picturesquely showy display in that delightful 
period of the day, when the sun was just lazing down 
behind the tops of the pine woods, and the breezes 
were chasing in from the blue reaches of the gulf. 
The nights, their large-starred, velvet-like sky seem- 
ing but a little more than arm’s length above the 
head, offered peculiar charms to loiterers on the 
beach or on the long, bench-equipped private piers 
that extended a thousand or more feet into the tide 
217 


MANDERS 


waters of the bay. When the tide went out, bare- 
legged and half -cl ad bronzed men and girls and 
boys — Italian and French and “ Creole” — waded in the 
shallows, holding aloft cressets of flaming “ fat pine,” 
picking up the soft shell crabs or spearing flounders 
for the morning sales from house to house, making a 
weirdly fascinating spectacle Florence never wearied 
of watching. There was moonlight boating and early 
morning fishing, and afternoon haunting of woods, 
diversion enough of many kinds besides the inevit- 
able social phases of idling life in a select resort, so 
that Mrs Storey soon came to a poise of mind which 
persuaded her that simple gowns and roses for jewels 
are not incompatible with happiness. Mr Storey, 
who had not known such wholesome recreation from 
the cares of business in years, began to get round of 
face and elastic of step, undergoing such a process of 
rejuvenescence that he fell into a sort of temerity of 
conduct towards Mrs Storey, and picked up his long- 
abandoned habit of calling her “ Leshy,” after the 
fashion of the negroes. 

Several hundred yards back of the house proper, 
in a semi-clearing in the oak grove, was a quaint 
cottage which Florence fitted up as a “ bachelors’ rest,” 
for the accommodation of her gentlemen friends who 
might from time to time come out to stop with them 
from Saturday to Monday, a spirit of hospitality that 
did not go unrewarded. Blakemore, who had already 
taken a studio in New York and was waiting to 
begin work when the affairs of his father’s estate, 
218 


MANDERS 


which was not as large as had been imagined, should 
be settled, came down from New York for a fort- 
night. Mr Storey would not hear of his going to the 
hotel as he had intended, but insisted on installing 
him in the “ bachelors’ rest,” to the secret annoyance 
of Mrs Storey, who, however, put on the outward 
show of friendliness. 

Blakemore had come to Waldmeer prepared to 
exercise over Florence those indefinable rights of 
possession which every “ engaged ” young gentleman 
believes to be guaranteed him upon his entrance into 
the probationary state of bliss. Florence seemed to 
have an altogether erroneous view of the situation, 
and adopted tactics that made another Tantalus of 
him, dangling the sweets of intercourse just safely out 
of his reach, and keeping him in expectant uncertainty 
as to the turn her caprices of mind were likely to take. 
He resolved to make a virtue of boldness. After a 
thoughtful pause in one of their purposeless conver- 
sations at the end of the pier, he asked abruptly, — 

“ When are we going to be married ? ” 

“Not until you amount to something,” she an- 
swered promptly, in matter-of-fact way. 

“You believe in perpetual engagements, then?” 
he asked. 

“ Oh ! I don’t think you are without possibilities,” 
she said seriously, not following his humorous lead ; 
“ but I am not so sure that you will develop them. 
I am certain you would not if you wait to set about 
it until you are married.” 


219 


MANDERS 


“ Why do you say that ? Marriage is the thing to 
bring a man to himself.” 

“ That, of course, depends on the man.” 

“ Or on the woman,” he urged in amendment. 

“ Not at all,” she answered decisively, “ at least not 
in the sense you mean. It is true a woman may be 
a hindrance or an assistance to the man she marries, 
but she can be an assistance only when the man is 
the really dominant force and capable of going ahead 
in spite of the woman. In a case of that kind 
the woman, if she has character enough to be self- 
denying, and devotion enough to identify herself 
intelligently with her husband’s ambition, can un- 
doubtedly strengthen his purpose, and that is all she 
can do. But if the man be naturally irresolute or 
only half in earnest, an average woman would simply 
close the door of possibilities against him, for an 
average woman is merely a dependence, and therefore 
an encumbrance that makes for the commonplace.” 

“ I don’t agree with you. But if it were so, what 
has that to do with you and me ? ” 

“ Shall I answer you frankly ? ” 

“ Of course. Why not ? ” 

“ Well, then, to be candid with you, I don’t think, as 
between you and me, that you are the really domin- 
ant force. I think I am the stronger of the two.” 

He laughed. “ Well, I am perfectly willing you 
should be ; but what makes you think you are ? ” 

“ Observation, my dear Walter, and some experi- 
ence with you. You are a planner, an undertaker, 
220 


MANDERS 


a beginner ; you are not a finisher. You are one of 
those easy, good-natured men who find it difficult to 
realise that concentration and a certain element of 
exclusive selfishness are necessary to any kind of 
success that is worth while. If you had a wife you 
would be domestic, and be without enough ambition 
to command your energies, especially as you are in 
no danger of having to work for your living.” 

“You misjudge me, Florence.” 

“ I don’t think so. Are you going to stick to 
painting ? ” 

“ Why, yes ; I think so. That seems to be my 
avocation.” 

“ There are no avocations. A man determines his 
own vocation. But I’m beginning to doubt that even 
painting has any very strong hold upon you.” 

“ Come, now, Florence ? Why do you say that ? 
I am passionately fond of painting. God knows, I’ve 
worked hard enough to get hold of it ! ” 

“ Well, I can’t find out that you have ever finished 
anything — ” 

“ But 1 have ! ” he interrupted eagerly. “ I have 
just finished something that I believe is worth while.” 

“ What is it?” 

“ A portrait.” 

“ Something you began in Paris ? ” 

“Yes.” 

“ A lady ? Madame Manders, I suppose ? ” 

“ She posed for it ; but it is your face.” 

“ Ah ! you make such combinations, do you ? ” 

221 


MANDERS 


“ I think it really a striking likeness. I am sure 
you will like it.” 

“I am not so sure. Don’t you think it time we 
were going in ? Father will be coming down with a 
lantern in the moonlight to look for us presently. It 
is funny how little confidence papa has in the moon.” 

He was conscious of a forced lightness in her 
manner, but could not account for it. He under- 
stood, however, that she had warned him off a too 
personal ground, and they walked up the pier in 
silence. When they had crossed the road she paused 
with her hand on the gate-latch. 

“ Do you know, it has been a disappointment to me 
that you should be here nearly two weeks without 
once seeming to have been struck with the artistic 
values of Waldmeer? That is one thing that makes 
me doubt your having the true artist temperament.” 

“ But I have been struck with them, and if I had 
the time I should make some studies of several effec- 
tive bits, possibly with you somewhere in the scene.” 

“ Then why not take the time ? ” looking saucily at 
him. 

“ I shall — when I return in September.” 

“ Oh ! you are coming back then ? ” 

“ Yes, if you are to be here.” 

“ And why not before ? ” 

“I have accepted commissions to paint two por- 
traits.” 

“Really!” 

“ Yes ; and I am to have good pay for them too.” 

222 


MANDERS 


“Indeed! Well, perhaps you are going to change 
my opinion of you” 

“ I hope not altogether,” he said, following her in 
through the gateway. 


223 


CHAPTER XYII 

‘ It is my opinion," said Mere Pugens, discontentedly, 
to a neighbour with whom she was gossiping over a 
friendly glass of absinthe in her favourite cabaret , 
“ It is my opinion Paris has not such another fool as 
our Marie Manders.” 

“ You think so, Mere Pugens ? ” 

“ I do, neighbour. She is starving on pease porridge 
at ten francs a week when she might as well have a 
hotel in the fashionable quarter, like my Lizette, and 
enjoy the comforts of a gentlewoman. If she hasn’t 
any ambition for herself she owes something to the 
boy. It is true she gives everything to him and keeps 
nothing for herself ; but what of that when she holds 
from him so much that he might have ! And what is 
it all for ? Ask her if you care to laugh. ‘ I wish to 
live respectable for my boy’s sake ! ’ Was ever such 
idiocy ? As if there could be anything as respectable 
as plenty of money and the things that go with it ! 
I feel sorry for the little imbecile, and have offered a 
thousand times since her lover ran away and left her 
to take her to Lizette, who is just now beginning to 
feel the need of having a young face to take about 
with her. Not that I am thinking of Lizette. 

224 


MANDERS 


Heaven be praised, she needs no meddling from 
me. I don’t know where she got her wisdom. 
Pugens was a sot, and my brains were none too 
lively ; but Lizette — Lord bless you ! she used to stop 
nursing to laugh at things she thought of. She 
would make a woman of Marie in a fortnight. But 
I’m afraid, neighbour, the poor child will go on being 
a fool to the end, and I’m thinking the end is not so 
far away. It is pitiful the way she has gone off in 
the past year.” 

Mere Pugens sighed, shook her head dolorously, 
and sought relief of feeling in several extra sips of 
absinthe. 

Back of her ill-directed thought there was a 
genuine and well-meaning sympathy. Her coarse 
nature had many kindly fibres, which vibrated 
tenderly when Marie was in her mind, especially now 
that she saw Marie making an unequal battle against 
conditions which she, Mere Pugens, thought had no 
sort of right to exist. 

Marie had gone to M. Monier to offer her services 
again as a model. The old master eagerly welcomed 
the offer, but when she stipulated that she should not 
be asked to pose for the nude he supposed she jested, 
and good-humouredly railed at her. 

“ Oh ! dearie, dearie ! hide such a figure and make 
us do with that pretty doll’s head, as if we were all 
Correggios doing infants ? That would never do in 
the world, my child ! Come, come, you have no reason 

yet to be ashamed of your figure, my beauty.” 

P 


MANDERS 


Finding her in earnest, he seriously undertook to 
dissuade her from sacrificing art to artificial scruples, 
proposing, if she objected to class work, to get her 
excellent engagements for private posing. But Marie, 
with such a smile as he could not understand, shook 
her head, declining to engage for anything but 
costume work. She began to realise now that those 
old jests of the students which she had treated so 
lightly were not jests at all. Dimpled chins and 
infantine eyes have no great value in mature art 
schemes. Some employment she found, indeed, but, 
clothed and in her right mind, her field of usefulness 
was necessarily limited ; yet if they had looked more 
attentively, looking through the surface into the 
deeps below it, they would have seen as the days 
went by that something was coming up into the doll 
face to counteract its dimple, something that would 
make it worth while to paint. But he is a great man 
whose brush dips below the surface; it requires a 
Velasquez or a Murillo to see mystery in the serene 
face of a child. Marie’s lot was cast with the 
moderns, moderns who paint the nude for its naked- 
ness, leaving it as naked as they find it, and her fifty 
and forty francs a week went down to thirty and 
twenty and ten before a year was done, and plain 
sewing for cheap shops became a supplementary ill- 
paid labour. 

Manders was kept for a long time in ignorance of 
any change in their material affairs, so artful was 
Marie in her economies. He was aware, however, 
226 


MANDERS 


of an increased devotion on her part, and though 
he was unable to analyse the character of this tender- 
ness, he felt the influence of a new dignity, a poise, a 
precision in her maternal attitude, and to his adora- 
tion of her was added a respect, as he somehow 
realised that she, rather than he, was the stronger 
now. Marie was hardly conscious of the transitions 
in herself at which Manders vaguely wondered. She 
did not know that the pressure of maternal responsi- 
bility within circumstances of privation and self- 
denial was fashioning her anew; but she did know 
that a strange contentment nearly akin to happiness 
grew out of this battling to keep Manders well clad, 
well fed and happily ignorant of the hardships with 
which she had to contend. Mere Pugens saw only the 
struggles ; she was blind to the rewards, and therefore 
could not understand that Marie was far from being 
an object of pity. But the old woman was alive to 
the growing gravity of the face in which she thought 
she discerned a wearing sorrow, and, though not 
appreciating, confessed the womanliness, the intelli- 
gent positiveness which were taking the place of 
the one-time helpless ingenuousness. Mere Pugens 
believed she knew the very hour that set the change 
in motion. It was a year ago. Blakemore, whose 
father had just died, wrote to Captain Warley author- 
ising him to dispose of such effects in the apartment 
in the Rue Danfert-Rochereau as were not to be sent 
to America. In this letter he said it was doubtful if 
he would be in Paris for several years to come, as the 
227 


MANDERS 


settling of his father’s estate, the invalidism of his 
mother, and his formal setting up as an artist “ with 
something serious to do” made it desirable that he 
stop at home. He gave particular directions for the 
packing and forwarding of the nearly-finished paint- 
ing of Marie, on which he had been so hopefully 
engaged, and which he was resolved to finish as a 
masterpiece, playfully underscoring the word with 
several strong lines. 

Marie had taken Manders to the first day’s sale 
of the household goods at auction, and Mere Pugens, 
who stood by, observed, with many self-satisfied 
waggings of the head, that Marie more than once 
furtively dried her eyes, and, when she learned that 
the picture was not to be sold, slipped away, leaving 
Manders with Mere Pugens. No cleverness is re- 
quired to put two and two together to make a 
sum of four, and the good shopwoman fancied she 
knew the signs of a bleeding heart as well as any 
woman in Paris. Her indignation rose against Blake- 
more, and she was unwilling that others should live 
in ignorance of her opinions concerning him, par- 
ticularly Marie. She climbed Marie’s stairs that 
evening to deliver a tirade against a sex to whose 
perfidy the world owes all its abominations. She 
was dumfounded, therefore, when Marie said, with 
unaccustomed firmness, — 

“You must never speak to me in this way about 
M. Blakemore. He is the best friend I have.” 

But as the months went by Mere Pugens was 
228 


MANDERS 


less and less disposed to find truth in the declara- 
tion. This day, then, when the talk with her 
neighbour over their absinthe had, as she imagined, 
fortified her mind with incontrovertible arguments. 
Mere Pugens went determinedly to Marie, and, un- 
mindful of opposition, summed up the situation to 
the reproach of Marie. 

“It is a shame for you to be slaving your life 
away in this beggerly manner because a miserable 
thing of a man that you ought to despise has aban- 
doned you to poverty.” 

This was the gist of her loquacious wrath, and 
Manders, forgotten in the room beyond, heard and 
understood her. He sat very still, some toys clutched 
in his hand, his face pale, his lips quivering, as he 
listened; and he sat so for many minutes after 
Mere Pugens had gone, listening to something that 
sounded like stifled sobs in the other room. When 
these sounds were silenced, and he heard Marie 
moving about again, he went to her, holding out 
to her the toys. 

“You may put these away, maman,” he said; “I 
am not going to play with them any more.” 

“ Not play with them any more ! Why, my little 
one?” 

“I am not a baby now,” he said. 

She stooped and kissed him. The little lips were 
very cold, she thought, and something of fear touched 
her. She offered to take him on her lap. There was 
someone singing and playing in the street. 

229 


MANDERS 


"No,” he said, “I am going down to hear the 
music.” 

He put his arms about her waist. His head came 
up to her breast. He laughed a little. 

“You see I am almost as big as you are,” he said, 
kissed her, and ran out of the door. 

He knew these street musicians. They were 
familiars of the neighbourhood, the man’s voice a 
well-trained but broken baritone that had been 
heard, no doubt, long ago otherwhere than in the 
streets, the woman’s voice a quavering soprano, that 
seemed to have its memories, too, of better days. 
Marie and Manders had loved to listen to them, 
thinking they sang right well, and had thrown 
down sous to them from the high window grate- 
fully. Their accompanying instrument was an ac- 
cordion, somewhat pleasantly subdued by age. They 
had moved further along the street when Manders 
got to them, and he followed them in their second 
remove, waiting until they were again ready to move 
on. Then, giving a two-sou piece to the man as 
they walked along, he said, — 

“I can sing, too, monsieur.” 

“ Ha ! and better than I can, I daresay, my little 
man, eh?” 

“Perhaps,” Manders answered, looking up and 
smiling frankly. 

“Do you hear him, wife?” the man said, greatly 
pleased. “Is he not a pretty braggart? And who 
taught you to sing, my master?” 

230 


MANDERS 


“ God, monsieur.” 

“ Then, in God’s name, sing, my boy, and I’ll play 
for you.” 

The woman laughed, but the man was serious. 
He put his hand on the lad’s head. 

“You are right to say that; it is God who teaches 
the true singer. Well, come, let us hear if you are 
one of His children. Sing ; I’ll follow you.” 

Manders began singing, the man accompanying him. 
The people passing paused with the crowd of children. 
The narrow street was soon blockaded, and Manders 
was singing alone, for the man had stopped playing. 
When the song was ended Manders looked up at the 
man in surprise. 

“ But you were not playing, monsieur.” 

“No, I was not playing, monsieur,” said the man, 
with singular respect. 

There was applause, “bravos” and “encores,” as 
well as the clapping of hands, the woman passing 
through the crowd holding out her cup for the sous. 

“ Will you sing again, monsieur ? ” asked the man 
at last. 

“ If you wish,” Manders replied, smiling. 

“ Un petit Mario,” said the man to the crowd when 
Manders had finished his second song, and taking the 
coin of the two collections he poured it into the lad’s 
cap, saying,— 

“ They are all yours, monsieur. I would not keep 
a sou of them if I were famishing, and, praise God, 
I do not lack,” 


231 


MANDERS 


“ But I want to sing again with you to-morrow, 
and the next day, and the day after,” Manders 
objected, offering to return the money. 

“ And so you shall, and whenever you please. 
That we may arrange for when you come again ; but 
to-night, monsieur, you are my guest,” spoken with 
a bow and a grace of manner surely not learned in 
the streets. 

The crowd very much approved, and Manders sang 
again before closing his cap like a purse about his 
earnings and speeding back to Marie, who would have 
begun to wonder at his absence. 

Entering the room where she was sewing, Manders 
thrust his heavily- weighted cap into her lap with an 
affectation of solemn indifference that did not wholly 
deceive her as to his excited state of mind. 

“ There is something for you,” he said carelessly. 

She held apart the sides of the cap, looking in 
curiously, and exclaiming with half -fearful astonish- 
ment, — 

“ Money ! What have you been doing ? * 

“ Singing.” 

In spite of him a triumphant note leaped out with 
the word. He knew himself betrayed. No good of 
further pretence. He flung his arms round her neck 
and abandoned himself to his joy. He gave her no 
time to ask questions or interpose objections until he 
had run through the experience of the hour and given 
it an enthusiastic application to the possibilities of 
their future. 

23 * 


MANDERS 


“ I’ll make you rich, maman ! They are going to 
love to hear me sing ! And when I sing they’ll pay ! 
Old Antoine said so ! ” 

She shared none of this enthusiasm. Terror 
played with her heart-strings. 

“ You have been singing in the streets ? ” 

“ Yes ; and I’m going to do it regularly now.” 

He grew smaller and smaller in her eyes. It was 
her baby-boy again, and he singing in the streets! 
The streets, with their perils, their many perils and 
dangers; and he going here and there throughout 
them, threatened by their dangers, touched by their 
vice ! 

“ I cannot let you do this,” she said ; “ I am very 
angry with you.” But her anger was pitifully near 
to tears. 

“Then count the sous,” he replied gaily, taking 
up a handful and beginning to count them himself, 
noisily, that he might not hear her remonstrances. 

He put the sous in heaps of twenties, saying now 
and then, “I can’t count if you talk, maman,” but 
keeping on industriously until his task was done and 
verified. 

“ Look there, maman ! a hundred sous and a half 
franc piece ! Five francs and a half in an hour ! 
And you scolding! You should be dancing about 
and clapping your hands! You ought to be very 
glad and proud that I can earn so much money so 
easily ! ” 

“I am proud and glad that you have a voice 
233 


MANDERS 


the people love so well to hear. But, my boy, my 
pretty little boy, must not sing in the streets, and I do 
not need to have him earn money for me. I can earn 
for both. By-and-by, when he is big, he may earn 
for me.” 

She stroked the curls back from his forehead, 
smiling to see what seemed to her a look of dis- 
appointment in his eyes. It was not disappoint- 
ment, however, as she understood when, steadily 
gazing into her face, he said, the tremor of mastered 
feeling in his voice, — 

“ I heard what Mere Pugens said to you a while ago.” 
A drooping of the head by ever so little and a lower- 
ing of the eyelids on Marie’s part. She said nothing. 
She knew there was an end of protest. The question 
was settled. Manders was master. Manders knew it 
as well as she, and he relented. He put up his arms 
to caress her, saying consolingly, — 

“ Only in the evenings, maman, when I have come 
home from school. I shall tell old Antoine that. And 
you know old Antoine will take good care of me. It 
is going to be great fun.” 

So Manders became a street minstrel, finding it not 
all fun, for there were foot-weariness and cold and 
rain and a tightness in the throat sometimes, and 
there were seldom five francs to his portion when the 
last song was sung in the street below Marie’s windows. 
But none of the heartaches or weariness came home 
to Marie. He brought laughter and gladness and 
triumph to her, rattling his sous down upon the table 
234 


MANDERS 


with so much satisfaction, counting them over with 
such pride of doing that Marie came by degrees to be as 
merry and as happy as he over their evening accounts, 
and to call him proudly “Monsieur le pourvoyeur.” 
And she was so gay with him, he did not notice, as 
the winter wore on, that the roses and the roundness 
were going from her cheeks ; he could not imagine 
that in her lonely hours she sometimes put aside her 
work through lassitude and lay upon her bed languor- 
ously waiting to hear his steps upon the stair to 
revive her energy. The welcome he expected was 
never wanting. The smile he loved to see as he came 
into the candle-light was always on her lips. Her 
words were never without the tender lightness that 
filled his heart with contentment. He knew nothing 
of ebbing vitalities. He had not learned yet that the 
smile of summer is the burning out of the year’s life. 
All is well where laughter is, in a child’s philosophy ; 
and where was sweeter laughter than Marie’s ? 

But Mere Pugens and Miss Warley, too, saw with 
worldlier eyes, and the one was angry and the other 
sighed. Down there in the Midi was the breath of 
regeneration, if, as the one argued, folly were not a 
self-willed blindness, if, as the other thought, poverty 
were not a tyrant. 

And one day in the mid-April this clear-sighted- 
ness came to Manders in the sunshine of the Luxem- 
bourg. The chestnuts were just spreading out the 
delicate green folds of their fan-like leaves, and the 
garden was thronged with children and their elders 
235 


MANDERS 


rejoicing in the soft freshness of the warm air. It 
was the end of the Easter holidays, and Marie, find- 
ing no good excuse to plead, had consented to come 
down in the morning for a frolic among the re- 
appearing beauties of the garden. Manders rebuked 
her want of animation, and laughed at her when she 
sank down on to the first bench they came to, profess- 
ing herself tired. 

“ It is so warm walking, dearie,” she said, with a 
strange little smile of apology. 

But he humoured her, and sat beside her, watching 
the children at their games. 

Presently she drew her cape closely about her, 
coughed, and said faintly, with a shiver, — 

“ I am so cold.” 

The sun blazed hot upon them. 

He looked up into her face to laugh at her, but a 
chill went through him. 

“ Oh ! ” he said in scarcely more than a whisper. 


CHAPTER XVIII 


M£re Pugens had hardly got her shop open the 
following morning and her papers ranged on the 
exterior shelves under the window when Manders, 
haggard as one who had kept a long, hard vigil, 
came hurrying in, too preoccupied with a fixed idea 
to think of greeting her. 

“ Who is the best doctor, Mere Pugens ? ” 

“Has anything happened?” she asked, rising 
anxiously. 

“ No,” he answered to her great comfort. 

Then she went on in her usual way, thinking to 
soothe his childish fears, — 

“Bless your heart, little one, there are many of 
them. And the best doctors are not always the ones 
that do the most good. One doctor is as good as 
another for some things, for there are some things for 
which none of them are any good at all — except for 
their cheapness. Now there is Monsieur Wimphen 
just round the corner — ” 

“ But who is the best ? ” interrupted Manders im- 
patiently, and turning toward the door. 

“ Well, there is Monsieur Besnard, in the Boulevarde 
St Germaine, near the Rue de Bac, who, everybody 
knows, was called into the Louvre at the time — ” 

2 37 


MANDERS 


But Manders had only waited for the name and 
address, and was down the street at a run before 
Mere Pugens had come to the end of her sentence. 
He abated nothing of his pace until he arrived at the 
Rue de Bac and breathless inquired of a footman 
which was the residence of the Doctor Besnard. He 
rang the bell of the mansion and entered into a court 
as the door opened as if automatically, and stood 
there waiting, uncertain which way to go. A servant 
appeared and demanded his business, smiling in a 
superior way when Manders declared his wish to 
see the doctor. Doctor Besnard was hardly at the 
call of unknown urchins who came panting in from 
the streets. 

“ Who sent you ? ” 

“I came myself,” said Manders; “it is necessary 
that I see Doctor Besnard myself,” he continued 
insistently. 

“He has no time. You must go, unless you tell 
me who it is wants the doctor.” The man put his 
hand on Manders’s shoulder and moved him toward 
the door. 

Manders, with a quick movement, slipped from 
the servant’s grasp and ran back into the centre 
of the court, looking up at the windows and call- 
ing out desperately with all the power of his 
lungs, — 

“ Doctor Besnard ! Doctor Besnard ! ” 

The servant followed angrily to retake him, clutched 
him by the arm, and was dragging him, struggling 
238 


MANDERS 


and still calling, toward the door when Doctor 
Besnard looked out from a first floor window. 

“ What is it, Joseph?” he demanded. 

“ Let me speak to Doctor Besnard,” called out 
Manders, pitifully, addressing himself to the bene- 
volent face at the window. 

“Bring the boy up, Joseph,” said the doctor, and 
retired into the room. 

“ What is it you wish ? ” asked the doctor, kindly, 
when Manders came before him. 

“My maman is ill. You must come to see her 
right away.” 

The child’s manner pleased him. 

“ And who is your maman, my lad ? Where 
does she live. 

“ Madame Manders. She lives in the Rue St 
Jacques, the fourth floor, to the right ; I’ll show 
you the way.” 

“And who is to pay me?” an amused smile on 
the lips of the doctor not used to seeking patients 
in the Rue St Jacques. 

“I shall pay you, monsieur.” 

The doctor looked into the young firm face up- 
raised to his so confidently. It was not a face to 
laugh into, and the smile went away from his lips. 
But he said again, — 

“I haven’t the time, my lad. I’ll send you to 
someone who will do as well, and who will not 
charge you so much. You know they say I rob 
my patients, and I should not want to rob you.” 
239 


MANDERS 


“But I have the money to give you. You will 
not have to rob me. It is all yours if you will 
make my maman well. Here it is — ten francs, 
monsieur.” 

He took from his pockets the sous and silver 
pieces that were his earnings for the last four 
days and heaped them on the table. 

“You may count them. There are quite ten 
francs.” 

“ Ah ! ten francs is a good deal of money, my boy. 
I should not want as much as that. I’ll take my 
share.” 

He gravely counted out two francs in sous, shov- 
ing the rest toward Manders, and rang the bell. 
Joseph appeared. 

“ At what hour is my first engagement this morn- 
ing, Joseph?” 

“Eleven o’clock, monsieur.” 

“ Plenty of time. Order the carriage. I’ll go with 
you to see your maman, my lad.” 

When they entered her room, Marie, who had risen 
to meet Manders, fixed a startled, half-terrified look 
upon the doctor, and sank down, trembling, upon her 
bed. She realised that Manders had found out her 
secret. Doctor Besnard had no need to ask questions. 
His experienced eye diagnosed the case at once. 

“ Madame, your boy thinks that I should have a 
talk with you, and scold you a little, perhaps. Well, 
run away, my child, for half an hour. Then I’ll tell 
you what we must do.” 


240 


MANDERS 


Manders went down the stairs. Doctor Besnard 
drew up a chair beside Marie, in whose eyes the tears 
were gathering, and took her hand. Very gentle 
and paternal and comforting of presence was Doctor 
Besnard. 

“ And you know, madame ? ” he asked after a time. 

“Yes, monsieur,” she answered, the tears falling, 
though there was a faint smile on the lips. 

“ And you know what brought it about ? ” She 
cast down her eyes, making no answer. “ I am your 
physician, you know. You must be frank with me.” 

“ In the winter, a year ago, I passed a whole night 
on the quais — ” She hesitated. 

“ Thinking of the water ? ” 

“ Yes, monsieur.” 

“ But remembering your boy ? ” 

“ Oh ! yes, yes, monsieur — remembering my boy ! ” 
covering her face with her hands and weeping un- 
restrainedly. 

“ And then the cough began ? ” 

“ Then the cough began.” 

He studied her in silence for some time, then 
said, — 

“ There is something besides the cough. Are you in 
sorrow ? Are you grieving ? ” 

“No, monsieur.” 

“ Are you sure ? ” 

“ There is nothing, monsieur — only — only the 
thought of leaving my boy.” 

“ No ; that thought would make for health. It is 
Q 


MANDERS 


not that. There is a disappointment? A heart- 
hunger, madame ? ” 

“No, nothing like that” But her hand warmed 
in his clasp. 

“I thought so,” he said to himself, but he knew 
she would make no admission, and he felt his help- 
lessness. 

“ A happy heart and a peaceful mind,” he said, 
“would do more for you than all the medicines in 
the world.” 

Manders had not returned when the doctor rose 
to go. 

“ I’ll come to see you again,” he said, bidding her 
good-bye. And going down the stairs, which seemed 
to him steep and dismal, he said, “ I’ll come for 
the boy’s sake. I’ll earn my two francs — but it is 
robbery after all.” 

Manders was waiting at the bottom of the stairs. 
He looked up mutely into the doctor’s face. 

“It is all right, my little man,” said the doctor, 
cheerily. “But you must be very happy where she 
is. Make her laugh all you can. But she mustn’t 
go up and down these stairs for a while. Yet you 
must live. Ten francs won’t last for ever. How 
will you get any more if the maman cannot work ? ” 

“I can earn plenty, monsieur.” 

“And how old are you, my lad?” 

“I shall be eight next month.” 

“ Eight ! And what can you do to earn so much 
money ? ” 

242 


MANDERS 


“ Sing, monsieur.” 

Doctor Besnard’s thumb and finger were on a gold 
piece in his waistcoat pocket as he looked at the lad, 
but he did not draw it forth. He put out his hand 
instead as man to man, and said, as Manders took it, — 

“ Sometime I should like to hear you sing.” 

That afternoon, when Manders met Antoine and his 
old wife at the appointed place, he said, — 

“ I am not going to sing with you any more after 
to-day.” 

“You are to stop singing!” exclaimed Antoine, 
protestingly. 

“ No, I’m not to stop singing, but I’m going to sing 
alone. I want to make all the money I can for 
myself.” 

Antoine gazed at him stupefied. The old woman 
laughed jeeringly. 

“ I knew how it would be,” she said, “ the little 
egotist ! I’ve seen his airs ! Never smiling when 
the people applauded. Tears in his eyes sometimes, 
too. Spiteful because there were not sous enough ! It 
is a thousand pities when the soul of a miser gets into 
a child ! Good riddance ! good riddance ! let him go 
now, Antoine ! He has spoiled our trade as it is. ” 

“ Have we been unfair with you ? ” Antoine asked, 
troubled. 

“You have been fair. You have been more than 
fair, you have been kind. I’ll come to you again 
when maman is well. It is for her sake now. She 
is too ill to work. I must earn for both.” 

243 


MANDERS 


“But the three of us draw larger crowds than 
would come for one ; and it is the size of the crowd 
that decides the size of the purse.” 

“ I’ve been thinking it over,” said Manders, with 
a gravity which even Antoine smiled to see, “ and I 
think this, Monsieur Antoine, when I am with you 
and madame the people think I belong to you and 
that you take care of me, and they are not so ready 
with their sous and fifty-centime pieces. But if 
I sang all alone — ” 

“ They would sympathise with you more ? ” 
Antoine interrupted. 

“It is not that,” Monsieur Antoine, Manders an- 
swered, a tinge of something like resentment in his 
voice ; “ but if they saw me alone they would know I 
was working for someone not able to work for herself, 
and they would be glad to pay me all my songs were 
worth to them.” 

Antoine was not so sure of the soundness of the 
reasoning, but he put his large hand on the boy’s 
shoulder in a way at once forgiving and encouraging 
as he said, — 

“ I understand you, my boy. You are a fine little 
chap, and I see that you are not deserting friends. 
Go your way. If all goes well with you so much the 
better. If not, you can always find old Antoine, as 
long as he keeps out of the Morgue.” 

So Manders began the life of self-reliance, and hope 
was ashamed to mock him. He soon learned to go 
where the crowds were gayest and freest, crossing to 
244 


MANDERS 


the right bank, making long pilgrimages along the 
grand boulevards and into the Champs filysees, re- 
turning foot- weary but heart-light to sing his last 
song below the window where Marie sat waiting his 
coming — waiting his coming but always fearing that 
he would not come. 

For some months the music lessons had been given 
in Marie’s salon, Miss Warley having ordered in a 
small upright piano, the explanations concerning 
which had never been very clear to Marie, though 
she got the impression that Miss Warley had it at a 
bargain but could not give it room in her own house, 
where there was “already one piano too many.” 
When Manders became aware of Marie’s illness and 
feebleness, he wished to stop the music lessons, as he 
stopped the going to school, in order to devote all the 
time not claimed by his professional duties to caring 
for her. But Marie found pleasure in these lessons, 
over the results of which Miss Warley was so enthusi- 
astic, and Manders went on with them for her sake. 
They became the daily important features of the 
morning, and for some reason Miss Warley and 
Manders seemed to grow happier and happier over 
them, so that Marie would often come in to be happy 
with them, sometimes humming through the air as 
Manders played, and joining with him in one of the 
little songs he sang to tempt her. And he began to 
imagine that after all Marie was not so very ill, fixing 
a great faith on Doctor Besnard’s low answer to his 
low question one day. 


245 


MANDERS 


“ She won’t be ill much longer.” 

His nights were troubled, however, and he wondered 
how it was that he could never catch her sleeping. 
He would steal into her room when she had been 
silent a longer time than usual, but he could not be 
so noiseless that she would not ask, — 

“ What is it, dearie ? ” 

One night, though, she waked him with her moan- 
ing and talking. He ran to her, affrighted, and knelt 
beside the bed, whispering, — 

“ You want me, maman ? I am here.” 

But she was sleeping, her thoughts not taking 
account of him at all. He waited, not daring to 
wake her. It was of “Walter” she was dreaming, 
and she was calling to him, “ Shall I never see you 
again?” and her cheeks were wet to his trembling, 
light touch. He knelt there until the talking sub- 
sided into a murmur and silence came with a sigh. 
And he knelt there still when the grey light stole in 
through the curtained window, thinking that his 
prayers were bringing her this calm and restful sleep. 

Manders met Miss Warley at the top of the stairs 
when she came for the morning lesson. 

“ Ho you know where M. Blakemore is ? ” he asked. 

“ Yes,” answered Miss Warley, wondering. 

“ Tell him my maman wants him.” 


246 


CHAPTER XIX 

The maples were decking themselves in their October 
finery, setting the mocking birds mad again, when 
Blakemore found himself once more installed in the 
grove cottage at Waldmeer. He was making good use 
of his time in the matter of doing the “ effective bits/’ 
which seemed to multiply under Florence’s direction. 
Monsieur Monier would hardly have been ashamed 
of his former pupil in these days, for Blakemore 
had overcome the obduracies of his brush to an 
astonishing extent and produced results that seemed 
to Florence indicative of a very considerable talent. 
The work in hand now was a dilapidated well-house, 
long ago abandoned as a water supply, but alive 
enough for artistic purposes. Florence, in white, was 
posed on the steps, her back against one of the 
decaying, lichen-covered posts which supported the 
tumbling roof, and Rene Papi, an Italian-negro half- 
bred who insisted on calling himself a French Creole, 
was in the act of drawing a bucket of water. The 
forenoon was systematically devoted to work on this 
exacting subject, which increased the expense by 
some few dimes, as Rene, notorious throughout the 
village of indolence for his loyalty to idleness, de- 
247 


MANDERS 


dared, with innumerable apologetic gestures and 
cajoling smiles, that his “ mos’ busy time happen 
always in the morning as a sure fac’, an’ ’bliged to 
charge for the loss of his own work.” 

Rene was fisherman, boatman, carpenter, driver, 
gardener, as circumstances dictated when he could 
allow himself the luxury of doing anything at all. 
He had got through forty years of life with so little 
anxiety of mind and such small waste of energy that 
he seemed no more than thirty -two or three, and was 
not an unattractive figure, with his long, black hair 
never combed, his well-managed moustache, half- 
concealing a sensuous but smiling mouth, his loose 
cotton shirt, innocent of buttons and rolling open 
half-way to his belt, showing a brown expanse of 
vigorous chest, his bare arms testifying to a suf- 
ficiency of mysteriously-acquired muscle. Blakemore 
had first seen him helping to unload an oyster boat 
at one of the market piers. He went about what he 
was doing in such a leisurely, indifferent way, and 
seemed so much readier to talk than to get his 
barrow from the boat to the oyster stalls, that 
Blakemore, after watching him some time, spoke 
to him. 

“ You are paid by the day, I suppose ? ” he said 
inquiringly. 

“ Oh, no, suh, I only works by job,” Rene answered, 
laughing, and promptly setting down his empty 
barrow to relieve his arms of strain during con- 
versation. 


248 


MANDERS 


“You don’t seem to be in any hurry to get 
through.” 

“ Oh ! I don’ want a git rich all at once. Plenty 
time for that.” 

“ You expect to be rich, then ? ” 

“ Bime-by. Mebbe. Who knows ? But not much 
use being rich. When I has money I has to spend it. 
Ain’t no sense working for what you has to git rid o’ 
right away. Ain’t that yo’ idee, boss ? ” 

“Can you sit still in one position long?” 

“ That ’pends what I’m sittin’ on.” Rene chuckled 
in appreciation of his own humour. 

“ Oh ! on something comfortable enough.” 

“ That’s my stronghold, boss,” Rene said with a 
freer chuckle. 

“ Well, I want to hire you to sit still for me.” 

Rene prepared to take up his barrow. 

“ I see you likes to have yo’ fun, suh. You is jes’ 
like me that-a-way. But I mus’ be gittin’ on. Hope 
I’ll see you some mo’ ? ” 

Blakemore explained his object and the bargain 
was made, Rene stipulating for “ fou’ bits ” as the 
reward of his sacrifice of serious labour in the pro- 
fitable hours of the morning, though this was a sum 
that represented the highest day’s earnings in his 
most industrious periods. 

Rene had all the characteristics of a mulatto, but 
as he spoke the bastard French of the region he felt 
warranted in classifying himself with the Creoles, 
and indignantly repudiated his negro moiety, and, 
249 


MANDERS 


preferring a French to an Italian begetting, avowed 
that his father was French and his mother Indian, 
generally adding to the statement the gratuity, — 

“An’ to judge by the way I feel, my mer’ was one 
them princes.” 

At any rate, Rene fitted beautifully into the picture 
of which Florence was the conspicuous figure, and 
Blakemore began to think that the investment was 
one happily directed to the making of a picture in 
which he imagined he was putting a great deal of 
meaning. 

“ Ain’t yo’ been a heap longer this mawnin’ ? ” said 
Rene, some days after posing had ceased to be a 
novelty and had grown into a dismaying resemblance 
to hard work. “My back gittin’ tired leaning over 
this-a-way. Feels like it ready break in two.” 

“ Yes, we’ll stop, Rene,” Blakemore said, with a 
smile, but giving the canvas some further touches. 
“You’d better come here and see how you look, 
though.” 

Rene obeyed eagerly. Indeed, he was being kept 
in service now by an increasing vanity rather than 
by the pay which he was beginning to think small 
reward for so much exertion. From the day he could 
detect the coming likeness to himself in the figure at 
the well, he had become inflated with self-opinion, 
and his impatience to see his portrait finished made 
him dissatisfied with the greater attention Blakemore 
was giving to that of Florence. 

“ Well, what do you think of it ? ” Blakemore asked 
250 


MANDERS 


when Rene had some time regarded the picture to the 
amusement of the others. 

“ I think, suh, that yo’ gittin’ that chest o’ mine too 
flat, and that’s a sure fac’,” said Rene in an aggrieved 
voice, and giving a confirmatory thump to his own 
firm front. “ They ain’t ’nother chest like this in 
Balouis, an’ I hates to see it spiled.” 

Blakemore laughingly reassured him and sent him 
oft* to other and more congenial labours, those in 
which he could “ shift ” his position once in a while. 

“ I sympathise with Ren^,” Florence said. “ I 
always feel after one of these ordeals that I’d like to 
get on a horse astride and go tearing down the road 
to find myself. It is the most exasperating, tedious 
thing I ever did. Nothing could induce me to pose 
for another picture.” 

“ How do you like the way it is coming on ? ” 

“Very well. But I don’t think Rene’s objection 
applies to my case. It is rather the other way, isn’t 
it? I think you will have to subdue that a little. 
A trifle less fulness, I should say.” 

“ A touch or two will make that right. Though I 
don’t think it so much amiss.” 

“ Of course we have a different point of view,” she 
said ; “ but if that is true to life, please exercise a 
modifying license. My actual measure is thirty-two 
inches. That looks forty.” 

He painted for a few minutes, she looking on 
critically, marvelling to see how great a change a 
simple brush-stroke could make in a general effect. 
251 


MANDERS 


“ How is that ? ” he finally asked. 

“ Better. Much better. I breathe freely again. I 
can eat my luncheon with a clearer conscience. And 
isn’t it luncheon time ? ” 

“ I hope so.” 

“ Gather up your traps. I’ll carry the stool.” 

She strolled on to the cottage, leaving him to 
follow at his convenience. She was sitting on the 
porch steps, waiting, when Jerry came from the house 
with some letters in his hand. 

“ Jes’ come fum de pos’ office, Miss Flaw’nce, an’ I 
thought yo’ might like to have me fetch yo’ these 
here. One is for Mr Blakemore, Miss Leshy say. 
Which is his’n, Miss Flaw’nce, an’ wha’ is he?” 

“ I’ll give it to him, Uncle J erry.” 

“ I ’spec’ I kin trus’ yo’ to do dat, Miss Flaw’nce,” 
said Jerry, with a broad, meaningful grin, as he 
handed her the letters. “ Has yo’ got any orders for 
me, Miss Flaw’nce ? ’ 

“ No, Uncle Jerry,” she answered, looking over the 
three or four letters. 

“’Bleeged to you, Miss Flaw’nce,” Jerry said, with a 
pull at his hat and turning back to the house. 

The letter for Blakemore was postmarked Paris, 
and had been forwarded from his New York address. 
She laid it on the porch and opened one of her 
own letters. Blakemore came up before she had 
finished it. 

“ Here is a letter for you,” she said, holding it out 
to him. 

252 


MANDERS 


“Thank you. Um. It’s from Miss Warley. You 
don’t mind my looking at it ? Queer sort of straight 
up-and-down woman, didn’t you think? Writes to 
me regularly without having anything to say that 
is worth while. That is what conscientiousness does 
for one.” 

“ Do read your letter and let me finish mine ! You 
are a regular chatter-box.” She squared around, 
leaning her elbow on one of the top steps, and pro- 
ceeded to forget him in the interest of her letter. 

Blakemore opened his letter indifferently, and yet, 
too, with enough curiosity to wish that Miss Warley 
might be more communicative than usual about 
someone besides Manders. Her last two letters had 
said nothing whatever of Marie, which was more 
disquieting than the one or two vague references to 
Marie’s illness, which Miss Warley had made in her 
cautious way. In one of these letters, the last one, 
there was something not very clear about Manders 
having joined a band of street singers, though Blake- 
more imagined this was no more than a neighbour- 
hood pastime, one of the boy’s strange caprices. He 
had no idea of the real conditions, not the shadow 
of a suspicion that anything serious was the matter 
with Marie. He was therefore shocked and passion- 
ately grieved by the unusual letter now in his hand, 
and which was blurred by unmistakable tear-stains. 

“ Madame Manders is ill, very ill. I haven’t wanted 
to tell you so long as I could believe that there was 
any hope. Three days ago, when she seemed brighter 
253 


MANDERS 


and better than she had been for some weeks, I 
spoke cheerfully to Doctor Besnard — who has been a 
noble friend — about her. He shook his head. “ Poor 
child ! ” he said. “ When the leaves begin falling — 
well, she will be one of them.” Still I put off writing. 
But this morning Manders came to me with a look 
in his face that made my heart bleed, and he said 
to me, “ Tell Mr Blakemore that my maman wants 
him.” I send you his message. It was in her sleep 
she called to you. She talked a great deal, Manders 
said, but he told me nothing. I have never heard 
her speak of you, but if she talks of you in her dreams 
she must think of you. Forgive me for beginning 
to think that she has a reason.” A sigh that was 
like a groan escaped him, and Florence looked up, 
startled. His face was pale and troubled. 

“ What is the matter ? ” she asked. “ Bad news ? ” 

He Hnded the letter to her silently. She read 
it, folded it, and drew the nails of her thumb and 
finger sharply along the edges, creasing the paper 
more tightly, again unfolded it and read over again 
the message from Manders and Miss Warley’s com- 
ment, then handed the letter back to Blakemore. 

“What are you going to do?” she asked in her 
usual even voice. 

“You understand?” 

“I understand.” 

“ And — and you are not angry ? ” 

“ Angry ! why should I be angry ? I have known 
it' since the day I saw you with her at St Cloud.” 

254 


MANDERS 


“No,” he said, earnestly protesting, “ it wasn’t so 
then. You misjudge her — you misunderstand. She 
has never been—” he hesitated. 

She looked up at him with a curious change of 
expression, a quick transition from indifference to 
interest. She realised instinctively what was im- 
plied by his hesitation and the guilty eagerness of 
his look. 

“ It was not a liaison ? ” she asked. 

“No, no ! a thousand times no ! She was not 
a woman of that sort. She was not to blame. The 
blame rests on me alone. I wronged her.” 

“ She — loved you ? She believed that you loved 
her ? Well ? You abandoned her ? ” 

“No, I was willing to do anything I could. It 
was she who decided.” 

“ You let her decide ? ” 

“ I could not do otherwise.” 

“And you compromised by agreeing to educate 
her boy. You are paying your debt that way ? ” 

“She knows nothing of that. She never would 
have agreed to such a thing.” 

Florence looked steadily at him for some moments 
in silence, a barely perceptible smile on her lips. 

“I understand it now,” she said at length. “I 
can put a new interpretation on her manner with 
me the day I called on her. She did not give 
herself to a chance lover; she was betrayed by 
an ideal. Well, what are you going to do?” 

“ What can I do ? ” 


255 


HANDERS 


“ ‘Must I tell you ? Go back to this woman. 
Pay your debt. There is no debt an honourable 
man is so much bound to pay as the debt he owes 
to the woman who has trusted him. Good-bye. I 
shall not see you again before you go.” She held 
out her hand. “ You may take your ring.” 

“You are turning me off?” he cried, clasping 
her hand in both of his. 

“I am sending you back to the woman who has 
the right to you. Pay your debt.” 

“You can’t mean that, Florence! You are right 
to be angry with me, for I have done you a wrong — ” 

“ Don’t mistake me,” she interrupted, “ I am not 
angry in the least. If your relations with her had 
been of the common sort — well, I take the world 
as I find it — I should not have condemned you for 
that which society encourages, fosters, and secretly 
applauds in men. But this is quite another matter. 
You once declared to me that Madame Manders was 
a good woman. I can believe she was. If she was 
a good woman she has a claim on you that I re- 
cognise. I can only repeat to you, 'Pay your 
debt.’ ” 

She passed him, walking in the direction of the 
house. He followed beside her, speaking with plead- 
ing intensity. 

“ Why should you send me away ? Why should 
I do this unheard-of thing ? I am in no way 
bound! I owe no debt! How do I differ from 
other men that I should be held accountable for a 
256 


MANDERS 


fault that others commit with impunity ? Am I 
worse or more responsible than they ? Am I alone 
to be sacrificed to a moral scruple — ” 

She turned towards him, stopping in the path, 
her eyes flashing the indignation of her impassioned 
speech. 

“I was not thinking of you! I was not think- 
ing of morals ! I have nothing to do with them ! 
I said nothing about sacrifice ! There is no sacri- 
fice in duty ! I care nothing for your usages and 
your customs, and your contemptible code of worldly 
honour ! I don’t care whether you are worse or 
better than other men ! I see you only as a man 
on whom another woman has a claim that I choose 
to respect. It is of that other woman I am think- 
ing — selfishly thinking, if you will ! I am thinking 
of myself in her place. If I had given myself to 
a man in love, and I were dying and my heart 
called for him, I should feel that he was mine, and 
that I had a right to summon him from the world’s 
end ! If I summoned him, I should expect him to 
come ! And if he were a man worthy of a woman’s 
trust he would come ! This woman is calling for 
you ! Your place is by her side ! Go to her ! ” 

She thrust the ring which she had taken from 
her finger into his hand and went hurriedly along 
the path to the house, hiding in her own room the 
emotion that could find no relief in tears. 

Blakemore, stunned by the force of her unex- 
pected outburst, stood for some minutes where she 
R 


MANDERS 


left him, staring blankly in the direction in which 
Florence had gone among the oaks, and then entered 
the cottage and mechanically set about getting his 
trunk in order to send by the afternoon train. 

He did not hear the luncheon bell, and after a 
time Jerry came for him. 

“ Lawd ! Mr Blakemore, yo’ ain’t lost yo’ ears, is 
yo’ ? I done ring de clapper out de bell tryin’ to 
make yo’ hear. Lunch is ready, an’ dey’s a fine mess 
o’ fresh ketched shrimps to tickle yo’ taste cornin’ in 
cole fum de ice. Bettah make has’e ; Miss Flaw’nce 
is powahful fond o’ shrimps.” 

“ Excuse me to Mrs Storey, Uncle Jerry, and tell 
her I’m packing up for the afternoon train to New 
Orleans, as I have got to catch the train for New 
York to-night.” 

“ Plenty time fer dat an’ lunch, too, Mr Blakemore. 
It’s bad luck to travel on a empty stomach.” 

“I’ll get supper in New Orleans. Come for the 
trunk in an hour, Uncle Jerry. I’ll see the ladies 
then.” 

“ Yo’ knows bes’, Mr Blakemore ; but yo’ is missin’ 
a mighty fine mess o’ shrimps, I’m tellin’ yo’ dat fer 
yo’ comfort. Shrimps don’ come round evah day to 
be cotch this time o’ year.” 

Jerry reported to Mrs Storey just as Florence, as 
composed as usual, came into the dining-room. 

“Going to New York!” exclaimed Mrs Storey, 
looking at Florence somewhat suspiciously. “Isn’t 
he rather sudden about it?” 

258 


MANDERS 


“Yes,” Florence answered quietly, taking her place 
at the table. “He has just received a letter that 
makes it necessary for him to start at once for Paris.” 

“ For Paris ? Really ! ” said Mrs Storey, giving her 
voice a plaintive inflexion. “I was just beginning 
to And him endurable. Who were your letters from, 
Florence ? ” 

“ One of them was from Cousin Minnie. I haven’t 
opened the others.” 

“Well, for pity’s sake, do! How can you be so 
lacking in curiosity ? ” 

Florence opened the letter, the writing on the 
envelope of which piqued her interest, because it 
was familiar in spite of her inability to identify it. 
She glanced at the signature, lifted her eyebrows 
and read the few lines with an enigmatical smile that 
got no further than the corners of her mouth. The 
letter was written from the Fifth Avenue Hotel, New 
York, and was signed “John Mendenhall.” She thought 
it terse enough, yet was conscious of a satisfaction that 
there was nothing of a propitiatory character about it. 

“ Dear Miss Storey, — I have been in New York 
for nearly a month, but have only now succeeded in 
getting your address. New Orleans is one of the 
American cities I most desire to visit. Balouis, I 
am told, is almost a suburb of that city. May I 
have the honour of calling upon your parents and 
you when I come ? — Most sincerely, 

“ John Mendenhall.” 


259 


MANDERS 


Florence tossed the letter across the table to her 
mother after reading it, and, without comment, 
opened one of the others. 

Mrs Storey made no concealment of her pleasure 
that Mendenhall should have written. 

“ How opportune ! ” she exclaimed, without explain- 
ing with what she associated the timeliness. “ Now 
I hope you are not going to be silly, Flo ! You will 
invite him down, of course. Don’t act as if a foolish 
love-quarrel could stop the motion of the spheres. 
Try to discover in yourself an average amount of 
common sense, and send him a favourable answer. 
I don’t ask you to be urgent, but at least be in- 
dulgent. Will you ? ” 

“ What would be the object ? ” 

“Object! Why should there be any object? If 
you have no other reason for doing it, do it to please 
me. I have no antipathies to Mr Mendenhall.” 

“Nor have I. I have no feeling toward him one 
way or another.” 

“ So much the more reason for being civil to him. 
Will you invite him down? ” 

“ I’ll send him permission to call, if you wish it.” 

“ Permission ! I do wish you could get a sensible 
view of life into that eccentric head of yours. Mr 
Mendenhall is one man picked out of a thousand, to 
say nothing of his prospects. You have been seeking 
such a chance for years — ” 

“ I have been seeking, mamma ? ” 

“ Well, I have, which amounts to the same thing 
260 


MANDERS 


and now that; the chance has come seeking you, to 
talk of * permission ’ in that irritating way. It is too 
provoking, Flo ! ” 

Thanks to Mrs Storey’s urgency, an indulgently- 
worded permit was despatched that night ; so it was 
no extraordinary coincidence if, on the day that 
Blakemore sailed out of New York bay headed for 
France, Mr John Mendenhall (now in reality Lord 
Kentmoor, Baron of Kentmoor) was sitting con- 
tentedly in the corner of a smoking-room in the 
limited train speeding toward New Orleans. 


261 


CHAPTER XX 


Though Mendenhall had, soon after his return to 
England from Rome, succeeded to the baronage held 
over-long by his invalid uncle, he imagined that he 
had particular reasons personal to himself for wish- 
ing to keep the fact concealed during at least a part 
of his American tour. He had the delicacy to think, 
among other things, that his title would effectually 
bar the way to a reconciliation with Florence, whose 
pride he rightly gauged, and he persuaded himself 
that her friendliness had become an object of increased 
importance to him. Memories of her seemed to have 
secreted themselves in every possible hiding-place of 
his mind for the purpose of rising up unexpectedly 
to pommel his egoism with regrets; memories of 
things of which he had taken no notice at the time 
— her habit of tugging at the top of her glove ; of 
kicking the tip of her elegantly-booted foot beyond 
her dress skirt at intervals when she sat in animated 
conversation ; of drawing up the right eyebrow when 
she was on the point of dissenting from something 
being said; the faintly distinguishable perfume of 
violets which the air caught from her handkerchiefs ; 
a thousand trifles, which more than beauty of face 
262 


MANDERS 


or grace of mind charm a man into unconscious 
bondage to woman, and allure him back from the 
illusions of freedom. The empty clubs and summer 
dulness of London made him especially susceptible 
to these insidious attacks, and after some futile 
vagabondage in Switzerland he resolved to try the 
curative expedient of a trans-Atlantic voyage. He 
booked on a Cunarder as John Mendenhall, and as 
John Mendenhall he made the acquaintance of 
Waldmeer. 

He was quite prepared for the reception Mrs 
Storey extended to him, but he was disconcerted 
by the way in which Florence received him. He 
thought he knew how as well as anyone to adapt 
himself to the frigid courtesy of a young lady who 
has condescended to overlook, without forgetting, a 
real or fancied indignity, and his plan of procedure 
with Florence had been so minutely and carefully 
thought out, that he felt no sort of uneasiness in 
the anticipation of his meeting with her. But 
Florence had done some planning on her own 
account, based on the stupidity of presenting a 
chill reserve to the man one has invited to come 
a thousand miles to visit one. She welcomed 
Mendenhall with such frank cordiality, with so 
much more friendliness than she had ever before 
shown him, even coming down the brick walk to 
meet him at the gate, that he promptly fell into 
confusion, and babbled such incoherencies as made 
him wonder what had become of his poise. This 
263 


MANDERS 


liberal manner said to him as plainly as if Florence 
had expressed her conditions in words, — 

“You are come as a friend of the family, as a 
free guest in the house ; but don’t make the mistake 
of supposing that you will be allowed to exercise 
any extraordinary privileges. You are warned off.” 

In accepting the warning, however, Mendenhall 
had no intention of being ruled by it. Having a 
distinct recollection of everything said between them 
in their last conversation, he found much to en- 
courage him now in two things Florence had said 
about that mischievous ring; first, the remark to 
the effect that she was just on the point of returning 
it; second, her defiant declaration, “You have made 
it a betrothal ring!” Without abating anything 
of his loyalty to principle, he had reached the 
conclusion, after arguing with himself all the points 
suggested by conscience, that Blakemore was really 
entitled to no more consideration than any other 
general aspirant to a reward which Florence was 
still at liberty to bestow where she would. A man 
very much in love ceases to be able to discriminate 
impartially between the respective properties of 
meum et tuum ) and is very apt to discover a divine 
virtue in the theory that everything is fair in love 
and in war. Mendenhall overcame his scruples as to 
the obligation a man is under to regard his friend’s 
fiancee as a preserve upon which there must be no 
trespassing, by contending that in engagement 
which has not even been declared to relatives or 
264 


MANDERS 


intimate friends is no engagement at all, rising 
hardly above the dignity of a special flirtation, and 
equally liable to an abrupt and unregarded termina- 
tion. If there was no engagement, there could be 
no discredit in cutting in ahead of Blakemore, if 
it could be done with no greater employment of 
artifice than time out of mind has been allowed 
in the rivalries of love. Any lingering doubt he 
had as to his perfect freedom to act as self-interest 
dictated was whipped away with the glance which 
acquainted him of the fact that Florence had put 
off Blakemore’s ring. Perhaps she had not worn 
it since the day it fell into the fountain ! But, be 
that as it might be, its absence from her finger 
now permitted him to assume that whatever reason 
she had had for wearing it before had ceased to 
exist. The thing to be overcome, then, was not 
Florence’s preference for someone else, but her in- 
difference to him — for indifference only, he thought, 
could account for the unreserved friendliness of her 
manner towards him, a manner so opposed to the 
attitude of mind which invites penitential extra- 
vagances and vows of reformation, or which even 
admits of a recurrence to past misunderstandings. 

Mendenhall was of the well-fibred breed of men 
whose energies increase as difficulties multiply ; and 
though he found this indifference where he had 
expected to encounter only an obstinate pique, he 
quickly recovered his fighting courage, and before 
he was seated with Mrs Storey and Florence under 
265 


MANDERS 


one of the giant live oaks, had begun to felicitate 
himself that the situation was precisely the one to 
quicken most agreeably the spirit of enterprise. 

“I am afraid, Mr Mendenhall,” Mrs Storey said 
after the exchange of information touching their 
respective adventures since the parting in Rome, 
“I am afraid you will not find it very interesting 
with us here. You see it is too early for the 
beginning of the season in New Orleans, and it is 
late for even the pretence at gaiety we have been 
making in Balouis. I don’t know how we are 
going to keep you from being bored to death.” 

“ My interest is already keenly excited,” Menden- 
hall answered, glancing at Florence. “ You can’t 
imagine what a relief I find it to get well away 
from cities. Besides, I think the place is full of 
charm. It is quite a new type to me. I w r as 
struck with the view along the drive from the hotel.” 

“ Have you pleasant rooms at the hotel ? I’m 
sorry we can’t put you up here. But we haven’t 
room to turn round in in the house ; and the 
cottage — ” 

“ Mr Mendenhall would hardly care to give up 
his independence, even if we could take him in,” 
Florence suggested. 

“ No,” Mendenhall said laughingly, “ I like to be 
where I can break things when the ancient Briton 
rises up in me; and heredity is never so rebellious 
in me as when I am imprisoned in a guest-chamber 
of a private house.” 


266 


MANDERS 


Florence objected to being made the victim of 
banter. “ You would do well to follow the example 
of one of our native savages, who, finding himself 
unfit for civilised restraints, moved over to that 
island you can see across the bay yonder, where he 
has everything to himself.” 

“ A hermit ? I should like to make his acquaint- 
ance. Suppose we sail over some morning ? ” 

“ He is rather ill-natured, they say,” Mrs Storey 
objected. “ He doesn’t approve of visitors.” 

“ So much the more reason for visiting him ; he 
is probably a character,” Mendenhall said. 

“ I should say he shows a want of character. 
Men who run away from disagreeable situations are 
not generally overcharged with character, are they ? ” 

Mendenhall was willing to believe that Florence 
intended this speech to reflect upon his own conduct 
in a certain emergency ; but her smile was much 
too bland to hide a subtlety, and he perceived how 
little use there was to make note of the remark for 
future consideration. 

“ No,” he answered, “ they are generally very poor 
cattle; though I believe there is a good deal of 
virtue in getting quite alone with Nature now and 
then, if one has the right sort of stuff in him. It 
takes some of the egotism out of a man.” 

“ Have you ever tried it ? ” Mrs Storey asked in 
entire innocence. 

“ Yes ; but I daresay the course was not thorough,” 
Mendenhall laughed. 

267 


MANDERS 


" Or the stuff may not have been of the right sort/* 
Florence said, smiling. 

“ You are laughing at my expense, I see,” Mrs 
Storey said, rising and straightening out the folds 
of her dress. “I always take that as a signal for 
retreat. I am going into the house to see if I think 
it worth while to ask you to stay for dinner. I 
didn’t remember about you when the market people 
came this morning, and there is no getting anything 
after eleven o’clock. Florence, do take Mr Menden- 
hall through the rose garden. I know of nothing 
better calculated to depress English egotism than a 
Southern rose garden. The English are so provok- 
ingly opinionated about their roses.” 

Mendenhall did stop to dinner, and made himself 
better acquainted with Mr Storey, upon whom he 
had made a call in New Orleans the day before, and 
by whom he had been taken about the levees and 
through the French market. 

“ There are no airs about Mendenhall,” Mr Storey 
had declared approvingly to his wife that night. 

And Mendenhall had made a mental memorandum 
to the effect that Mr Storey was not to be regarded 
in any sense as an insurmountable obstacle. He 
had, indeed, found Florence’s father an easy-going, 
amiable man, who did not concern himself with many 
ideas apart from business, and yet was not so much 
absorbed in commercial pursuits as to be careless of 
those genuine courtesies of life, on the observance of 
which the Southern gentleman prides himself, 

268 


MANDERS 


When the time came to say good-night, Mr Storey 
proposed to walk to the hotel with Mendendall, pro- 
fessing to be able to enjoy his cigar better in a stroll, 
as, in his opinion, a pipe “ with enough stem to let 
you look down into the glowing tobacco” was the 
true companion of blissful indolence. 

“ There is a moon, Florence ; suppose we go with 
them \ ” Mrs Storey proposed. “ I think I’d like to 
stretch myself.” 

But Florence pleaded the necessity of fortifying 
herself for the fatigues of a trip to Pass Christian 
with Mendenhall, to which she had committed her- 
self for the early morning. 

“You can go anyhow, if you want to, my dear,” 
Mr Storey said, addressing Mrs Storey in a patronis- 
ingly affectionate way. 

“No, no,” said the lady; “I don’t believe much 
in moonlight trios. Conversation is too difficult. I 
can content myself with a run up and down the pier.” 

After the men had gone, Mrs Storey came up to 
Florence, and putting her arm around her waist, quite 
as if they were girls together, urged her along, 
saying,— 

“ Come, we’ll go down to the end of the pier and 
sit till your father returns, and have a real con- 
fidential talk about — a lot of things. You are not 
any more ready for bed than I am. But I under- 
stand ; you did not want to appear too precipitate. 
And perhaps it is just as well. Men are so easily 
spoiled. Though I don’t think you have any occasion 
269 


MANDERS 


to employ tactics in this case. The advantages are 
obviously all with you. And I must say I was 
charmed with you to-day, and really I am grateful 
to you for your exercise of good sense, Flo, grateful 
and delighted, dear.” 

“ Whatever in the world are you talking about, 
mamma?” Florence interrupted, laughing. “What 
has happened to you ? You can’t say it is the moon, 
for it isn’t strong enough, and the wine was ever so 
long ago.” 

Mrs Storey withdrew her arm from her daughter’s 
waist. “ That is one of your malignant laughs ! 
Then you are not going to take me into your con- 
fidence ? ” 

“ About what ? ” 

“ About what ? As if there was any question about 
what! You don’t mean to pretend that the affair 
stands between you and Mr Mendenhall as it did 
before I left you alone with him ? ” 

“Precisely. And it will stand just there, if you 
will ask about it, when Mr Mendenhall’s visit has 
come to an end.” 

“ I don’t believe you. You have a vicious spirit 
of torment in you, and you delight in vexing me. 
Instead of a sisterly candour with me, you have an 
impish impudence, and I cannot even have the 
authority of a mother respected. Authority, indeed ! 
A precious lot of authority parents have over children 
nowadays ! And as for mothers, I can see no use 
for them after they have performed the functions of 
270 


MANDERS 


maternity ! Advisers ! counsellors ! guides ! friends ! 
Humph! those words are no longer even figures of 
speech in the filial vocabulary as applied to mothers ; 
and the time probably is not far distant — ” 

“ You are wasting energy, mamma,” interrupted 
Florence, in her turn putting an arm about Mrs 
Storey, at the same time giving a little steadying 
shake with her thumb and finger to Mrs Storey’s un- 
duly elevated chin. “ You are quite on the wrong tack. 
If you thought you detected in me to-day a sign of 
happy satisfaction, it was not because I had come to 
an understanding with Mr Mendenhall, but because 
I am getting to an understanding with myself. I 
am working out a little problem of personal arith- 
metic, and I’ll tell you all about it when I get the 
answer. For the present I can only say that it is not 
a sum in church addition, by which one plus one 
equals one. Now, let’s talk about something else.” 

“Blakemore, for example.” Mrs Storey exploded 
the name in much the same way that one puff’s out 
an obstinate candle. 

‘‘Not of men at all, but of missions.” 

“ Bah ! ” exclaimed Mrs Storey, “ men are women’s 
only missions, no matter what names you use to 
designate them. You have woman’s this associations, 
woman’s that societies, and woman’s clubs coming up, 
religious, social and political ; but at one end of them 
all is the kitchen, and at the other end is the drawing- 
room, and man is on a pedestal mid-way between 

the two. I get very tired hearing about woman’s 
271 


MANDERS 


mission, and finding that it always resolves itself 
into a struggle to annihilate everything that is not 
of the masculine gender. You will find that a female 
reformer is generally the result of Nature’s indecision 
whether to make a man or a woman, and compromis- 
ing in a neuter, mentally speaking, of course.” 

“ You have given me the key to the riddle, mamma, 
and helped me tremendously. The way is clear before 
me. I know my strength henceforth, I am one of 
those mental neuters.” 

“ Well, don’t try to rob me of actual grand-children, 
if you do make an imbecile of yourself in other 
directions. And if you were as wise as you pretend 
to be, you would let me pick out the father. I find 
it chilly out here without a wrap.” 

“ Shall I get you one ? ” 

“No; you are not interesting enough to make it 
worth while. I’m going in.” 

“ What do you think Mendenhall asked me to- 
night ? ” Mr Storey asked of Mrs Storey when they 
were alone. 

“ I suppose he asked you if he could have Florence,” 
Mrs Storey replied complacently. 

“ You have marvellous intuitions, Leshy ! He did.” 

“ And what did you say to him ? ” 

“I told him, of course, that that was a question 
with which I had nothing whatever to do, and I 
referred him to Florence.” 

“Well?” 

“ Then he wanted to know if I gave him leave to 
272 




MANDERS 


pay his addresses to Florence. I’m glad it was dark 
enough to hide a grin, Leshy, for I’m sure one spread 
itself all over my face. But I gave him leave just 
the same ! Imagine one of our boys asking leave to 
court a girl ! Much they or the girls either care what 
the old man thinks, eh, Leshy ? But I rather like 
Mendenhall. He is clean-cut and straightforward. 
He is about as nice as Walter, I should reckon, though 
they’re not much alike ; but Walter has one enormous 
advantage in my eyes, he lives on the right side of 
the ocean. I must send word to Walter that there is 
a rival in the field.” 

“ You must do nothing of the sort.” 

“Not warn him that I have given another man 
permission — ” 

“ Certainly not ! Don’t meddle in what doesn’t 
concern you. They are all quite capable of taking 
care of themselves. Besides, everything will be settled 
before you could get word to Blakemore if you should 
be ninny enough to write.” 

“You think so?” Mr Storey asked, a troubled 
look coming into his face. 

“ Why, yes. I think this excursion to Pass 
Christian in the morning quite favourable to a 
definite settlement.” 

Mr Storey gave a rather deep-drawn sigh and 
stroked his bald spot reflectively. 

“It seems so plaguey treacherous. But I sup- 
pose it is all right. Women seem to have rules 
of their own for the management of this sort of 
s 


MANDERS 


affair. If they were both here, though, I’d bet on 
Walter.” 

“ And, if I know orange blossoms when I see them, 
you would lose.” 

“Maybe,” Mr Storey said musingly, and fondling 
the top of his head anew. “I remember my father 
saying to me one time when we were at the races in 
Mobile, ‘ If you ever have anything to do with race- 
courses, Henry, make it a rule never to bet on fillies ; 
they are not to be depended on.’ ” 

“ I must confess that I don’t see the application of 
that remark to our present subject of conversation.” 

“ There isn’t any, my dear ; none whatever. I was 
only thinking that there is a right smart resemblance 
between girls and fillies. Don’t you think so ? ” 

“I think you are odious. Good-night,” and Mrs 
Storey turned the angle of her cheek to receive 
the tributory kiss which she nightly exacted of 
Mr Storey as an evidence of continued conjugal 
submission. 


274 


CHAPTER XXI 

If the day at Pass Christian offered favourable 
opportunities, Mendenhall was not injudicious enough 
to take advantage of them. His object seemed to 
be to persuade Florence of the entire disinterested- 
ness of his motives in consenting to appropriate to 
himself so large a share of her time and society. 
He exerted himself to be agreeable without over- 
stepping the bounds of reserve she defined for him, 
and was so careful to avoid anything like a reference 
to past incidents of a personal nature that Florence 
began to doubt, as the day wore along, if she had 
any good reason for the guards she had posted at 
every avenue of conversational approach. Such is 
the perversity of human nature, the more steadily 
Mendenhall bore away from the one subject she had 
determined should not be discussed between them, 
the more desirous Florence became that he should 
venture toward it. She even felt a sense of defeat 
and humiliation that evening when Mrs Storey, her 
eyes eager and her smile expectant, came to her 
with a meaningful “Well?” to which she had to 
respond with cheery mendacity, “I haven’t an idea 
what you mean.” 


275 


MANDERS 


“I mean is it settled?” 

“ Don’t be a goose, mamma. I have told you there 
is nothing to settle.” 

There were many occasions in the next half-dozen 
days perfectly adapted to emotional lapses, of which 
Mendenhall showed an irritating unconsciousness. 
There were aimless driftings through the pine woods, 
over the deep carpet of fallen needles ; drives along 
the shadowy palm-dressed road that led to the old 
mill on the river, a spot Arcadian in its invitations 
to romance ; idlings in a boat anchored over the 
channel, where Florence, under a sunshade, read 
aloud as Mendenhall patiently fished, with no more 
sportsmanlike reward than the hooking of catfish 
not gamey enough to struggle against captivity, or 
lashing “ stingerees ” that were dangerous to get 
off the line; strolls at sundown along the beach, 
grass-grown to the waters edge; opportunities so 
neglected by Mendenhall that Florence came to have 
an irritable resentment of that perpetual mark of 
interrogation in Mrs Storey’s eyes. Resolved as she 
was what to say should Mendenhall presume to get 
sentimental, she was becoming impatient for the 
chance to say it, and there were times when she 
was almost irresistibly impelled to begin the attack 
herself. 

“ His complacency is coming to be positively 
insulting,” she thought. “ I shall die of chagrin if 
he doesn’t get out of it.” 

And it happened that Mendenhall chose what 
276 


MANDERS 


might be thought the least suitable, the least pro- 
pitious of all possible times, were it not that love 
has no eyes for the incongruous and no sense of 
untimeliness. 

It was the outcome of an interrupted sail. 

Rene, whose repinings over the wanton abandon- 
ment of work on his picture Florence had soothed 
by various friendly employments, had rigged his 
cumbersome fishing-boat into quite a respectable 
sailing craft for their benefit, and with its aid Florence 
and Mendenhall had made explorations of remote 
points of the bay. Mendenhall was an excellent 
sailor, and finding the boat a good and tractable 
traveller, had proposed one morning that they 
provision themselves for the day and put out into 
the Gulf and “ shake off the land for a while.” Mrs 
Storey had accepted Mendenhall’s invitation to go 
with them, and entered into the enterprise with such 
vivacity of spirit that even Florence was surprised 
when, at the last moment, Mrs Storey suddenly and 
dramatically declared, — 

“ There ! it is the most provoking thing in the 
world, but do you know, Flo, I forgot all about 
having promised that wretched father of yours 
to meet him in New Orleans this afternoon ! I’ve 
got to sign something or other, heaven knows what ! 
I can’t go with you, but don’t give up your sail. Go 
and have a good time. It is a splendid day for it. 
I envy you ! I was pining for a lungful of open sea 
air. Take care not to get drowned, Mr Mendenhall. 

2 77 


MANDERS 


I daresay it would be highly poetic, but don’t do 
it. You know we have a bezique party for to- 
morrow night.” 

They put out under a fine breeze blown fragrant 
from the pine woods and made straight for the open 
sea, concerning themselves not at all with that patch 
of umber which spotted the eastern horizon as the 
cloud which Gehazi discovered after repeated clamber- 
ings to the mountain top. 

Storms, like other forces in the South, gather with 
leisurely deliberation and generally with apparent 
irresolution, . the clouds shifting and clearing, and 
remassing and dispersing, in such a purposeless 
fashion, that often befooled humanity gets into the 
way of despising the signs of the heavens and goes 
its way reckless of consequences. Florence, better 
acquainted than Mendenhall with the caprices of her 
native skies, saw nothing to excite her anxiety in 
the aspect that Mendenhall thought ominous, when, 
considerably after noon, they found themselves in 
the open waters, land indistinguishable, and giant 
spectres of white, and yellow, and purple, and black, 
making a majestic array against the sun. Far 
away, too, the white -caps were beginning to sport. 

“ What if we do get caught ? ” Florence cried 
with enthusiasm. “ I could get under the tarpaulin, 
and you are not made of sugar or salt ! These 
storms never amount to anything at this time of 
year. You would only have to keep the boat before 
the wind. It would be grand sport. The only fear 
278 


MANDERS 


is that these clouds are making fun of us and don’t 
intend to make things lively at all.” 

“Well, if we don’t have a ‘good one/ you have 
got a special system of meteorology in this country,” 
said Mendenhall. “ My opinion is that we ought to 
make for shore with all speed.” 

“ Are you afraid ? ” Florence laughed. 

“Yes, I’m afraid. I am always afraid of a tub 
like this when there is a woman on board with that 
sort of thing coming up.” 

“ I thought Englishmen were afraid of nothing.” 

“ So they are ; very much afraid of it.” 

“ You think I would cut up badly — have hysterics, 
and all that sort of thing.” 

“ I think you would act like a woman.” 

“ Try me.” 

“ I have a mind to,” Mendenhall said, smiling, and 
letting the sail belly out a little more to the stiffening 
breeze. 

He kept the boat head-on for the white-caps that 
were beginning to break a few boat-lengths beyond 
them, and as the little craft careened as if to take in 
sea, Florence splashed her hand into the water with 
the delight of a child, and laughed with unrestrained 
pleasure when the boat dashed into the rising billows 
and sent the salt spray flying over them. 

But a reinforcement of clouds had come up from 
the west and south-west, shutting out the sun, and 
Mendenhall presently realised that there was no time 
for larking. The shore was a long way off, and the 
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MANDERS 


storm, having done with trifling, was preparing to 
he very much in earnest. He gradually veered the 
boat round, until, before Florence was aware of any 
change of direction, they were bowling along before 
a steadily-increasing blow, that threatened to make 
it necessary to take in the sail if they were to escape 
foundering among waves that were becoming turbu- 
lent under conflicting winds. 

“ Wasn’t it worth while ? ” Florence cried out 
jubilantly, just at the moment when Mendenhall 
thought the sail was getting away from him and 
was making prodigious efforts to recover control. 

“ Decidedly worth while,” he answered, giving the 
stay-rope an extra hitch around the pin. “ But you 
must be jolly well wet.” 

“It is not worth mentioning. Salt water never 
hurts one. It’s a tonic.” 

“ Are you chilly ? ” 

“ No ; it is delicious. Do you mind % ” 

“I am just beginning to enjoy it.” 

The rain held off considerately until Mendenhall 
saw land a short run ahead, when there came a 
scattering discharge of big drops. 

“We are getting to shore. We may find shelter 
before the rain falls. We must have made a lively 
run of it. I didn’t think we were so near.” 

Florence looked over her shoulder and took their 
bearings. 

“ That isn’t the shore,” she said, laughing. “ That 
is the hermit’s island. We won’t find any shelter 
2S0 


MANDERS 


there, I can tell you. The shore is a mile and a half 
beyond that.” 

“ We’ll run in there until the storm passes any 
way,” said Mendenhall, heading for a break in the tree 
line that seemed to offer a landing point. 

The bow of the boat ground into the sand and 
gravel and came to a stop with a lurch several feet 
from the shore line. Mendenhall leaped into the 
water and made the painter fast to the trunk of a 
sapling, and then waded back for the tarpaulin, which 
he took up, saying to Florence, — 

“Wait a minute ; I’ll have to carry you.” 

He carried the tarpaulin to the foot of a huge elm, 
whose wide-spreading and compact branches promised 
shelter, and hurried back for Florence, as the rain was 
falling heavily now. 

“ Don’t come for me,” she cried, standing up in the 
rocking boat with her skirts grasped in both hands. 
“ It isn’t deep. I’ve nothing to spoil. And I should 
like wading. Do look the other way.” 

But he came stubbornly on. 

“ I am going to carry you,” he said, and as he took 
her in his arms, lifting her to his shoulders, she 
wondered why she had never noticed that he was a 
man built for uncommon strength. She felt very 
like a child in his assured grasp. He did not put 
her down until they were under the tree. 

“ There ! ” he said with satisfaction. “ Sit down ; 
the ground is dry yet ; and I’ll fix this tarpaulin over 
you. Now,” he said, when he had arranged a tent- 
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MANDERS 


like protection for her, “ if it rains cats and dogs you 
won’t suffer.” 

“ There is plenty of room for you,” she said. 
“ Aren’t you going to come under ? ” 

“ Rather,” he said, taking a seat beside her. “ Do 
you mind my smoking ? ” feeling in his waistcoat 
pocket for a cigar. 

“ No ; if you have a cigarette I’ll join you.” 

“ I didn’t know you smoked ! ” 

“I don’t; but I can — and this is one of the occa- 
sions when I’d like to.” 

He offered her his case, and, lighting a match, held it 
to her. 

“ Light your cigar first ; I’ll take a light from that ; 
it is more sociable.” 

“ If we had those things out of the locker now,” he 
said presently, “ we might have a picnic. Shall I get 
them ? ” 

“ Wait till the rain stops. I suppose you haven’t a 
dry thread on you as it is. You must be cold.” 

‘‘Not in the least. This isn’t my first wetting. 
And, as you say, one can stand a lot of salt water.” 

“I suppose this sort of thing would scandalise 
all the women of your London set if they knew 
about it.” 

“ I don’t know. Why ? ” 

“You English are so tediously conventional and so 
stupidly proper ! Your bible is a book of etiquette — 
which, by the way, is like your constitution, un- 
written — and you have compressed the ten command- 
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MANDERS 


raents into two, ‘Thou shalt not be natural and 
‘ Thou shalt have no other God but Form.’ ” 

“But we are beginning to make allowances for 
Americans/’ he said, smiling impudently, as he looked 
at her through his cigar smoke. 

“ You mean we are beginning to educate you.” 

Mendenhall laughed. 

“No doubt that is the Yankee way of looking at it. 
Children are always sending their grandparents to 
school.” 

A crash of thunder, followed by a torrential down- 
pour, to which the elm offered no resistance, made 
them huddle together and draw the folds of the 
tarpaulin closer about them. They could hear 
through the roar of the storm the beat of heavy 
breakers, and knew that the tempest had reached 
the height of its violence, and must soon subside. 
Within twenty minutes the rain had stopped, though 
the drops from the leaves were still falling on their 
canvas roof in lively tattoo. The wind had spent 
its force, too, and the waves were tossing only with 
the energy of their own momentum. Mendenhall 
pushed aside one end of the tarpaulin, and got upon 
his feet. 

“ I’ll look after the boat. A little of that wine and 
a biscuit or two will do us no harm just now, I think. 
Hello ! ” he exclaimed a moment later, “ where is the 
boat ? It’s gone ! ” 

Through the breaking clouds the sun shone brightly 
on the bay, illuminating it to the horizon. Several 
283 


MANDERS 


hundred yards away, the boat was drifting with the 
waves and tide, flapping its loose sail in the breeze, 
as if waving them a mocking good-bye. 

Florence came to his side and looked as he pointed. 
“ There it goes ! ” he said dismally. 

“ What a joke on you ! ” she laughed. “ That 
shows how securely you can tie up a boat.” 

“ I tied it securely enough, you see,” pointing to a 
coil of the painter about the sapling. “ The confounded 
rope was rotten. What are we to do ? How are we 
going to get across the bay ? ” 

“ How woebegone you look ! One would think 
you had a mind to cry about it ! I think it is a jolly 
lark ! It is like being shipwrecked on a desert island. 
We can pretend we are the Swiss Family Robinson. 
What are you so solemn about ? ” 

“ You don’t seem to see that there is a solemn side 
to this,” he said earnestly. “ In the first place, as the 
tide is coming in, the boat will drift to shore soon or 
late, and they’ll think that we have been drowned.” 

“ W ell, that won’t drown us, will it ? ” 

“ But what about your mother and your father ? ” 
“How painfully serious you are? As the storm 
has ceased, the boat will drift in right side up, so that 
the stupidest fisher-boy will know we haven’t been 
capsized. They will naturally conclude that we were 
out of the boat when it got away from us. A little 
common sense will teach them that we are safe on 
dry land, and they will probably think of looking for 
us in the right place.” 


2S4 


MANDERS 


“ But the boat may go miles out o£ way, and not be 
picked up before morning ! ” 

“ So much the merrier,” said Florence. 

Mendenhall looked gravely into her face as he said 
slowly, — 

“Would you mind being left on the island alone for 
a few hours ? ” 

“ Afraid ? No ; what should I be afraid of ? ” 

“ W ell, I am going to swim across.” 

“ Swim across ! Why it is a mile and a half ! You 
would drown before you got half-way.” 

“ That would be better than for me to stop here all 
night.” 

“ Don’t be silly,” said Florence, taking his meaning, 
and changing her manner. “You haven’t any need 
to do the heroic, though I compliment your readiness. 
All we have to do is to walk to the other end of the 
island and borrow a boat from the hermit — or buy it 
if he won’t lend it.” 

Mendenhall thrust his hands into his jacket pockets 
and laughed, rather a foolish laugh, like that of a boy 
whose shrewdness has been tricked by his schoolfellows. 

“I had forgotten the hermit,” he said. “You 
were laughing at me. Isn’t it strange how easily 
a man can make an ass of himself? I’m rather 
given to that sort of thing; it has got to be a 
second habit with me. Well, I’ll go and hunt the 
hermit. There is no good of your going. You 
stop here. You might as well keep your feet dry. 
I’ll pull the boat round here for you.” 

285 


MANDERS 


There are conditions precedent to pulling a boat 
as there are to cooking a hare, as Mendenhall 
admitted when he found no hermit in the house 
and no boat in the slip provided for it. Half sub- 
merged in the sand and water was the rotting shell 
of a skiff, which yielded itself in pieces as Menden- 
hall tugged at it, but this was the only thing in the 
way of water-craft that rewarded his search. 

“ We are monarchs of all we survey,” he declaimed 
as he rejoined Florence, “ and our right there is none 
to dispute, for the hermit has gone and taken his 
boat with him.” 

“ He couldn’t very well go without it. I suppose 
there is nothing for us but to wait his return. Is 
his house open?” 

“Yes; but I don’t think you would care to go 
inside.” 

“ Probably not, but we could fetch out a chair or 
something to sit on that is dry. It is clearing off 
beautifully. Come along; we sha’n’t find it so 
difficult to endure our captivity.” 

As they pushed along through the wet under- 
brush and the tangles of rank grass, Mendenhall, 
while talking animatedly enough with Florence, was 
taking counsel of himself in widely different direc- 
tions of thought. What surprised him was that 
this inner talk should take the character of a 
debate in which pros and cons were argued with 
calm force on the one side, and a reckless fervidity 
on the other. The surprise was due to the fact 
286 


MANDERS 


that he seemed to be making the acquaintance of a 
new personality come up from the domain of his 
sub-conscious self. He looked upon it with the 
curiosity that he would have given to the casual 
inspection of any material lusus naturae for the 
first time brought before his eyes. But as the sun 
sank below the forest horizon, with no sign of the 
homing hermit, Mendenhall awoke to the con- 
sciousness that the arguments were becoming- more 
and more confused, and the new personality more 
and more distinct and interesting. 

“Suppose the hermit shouldn’t come back to- 
night ? ’* he asked suddenly. 

“That hadn’t occurred to me,” Florence replied, 
a tinge of anxiety for the time troubling her fancy. 
“ That would be dreadful ! And do you know it is 
not at all improbable, for I’ve heard that he some- 
times works all night in the oyster beds!” 

“ If he hasn’t come by moonrise I shall make for 
the shore,” said Mendenhall, with as much emphasis 
as if he were combating opposition. The prospect 
alarmed her. 

“You couldn’t do that. The distance is too great.” 

“Not at all. I can do it easily enough.” 

“ But there is really no necessity for you to take 
the risk. If worst come to the worst, we could wait 
here until morning.” 

The new personality concurred in the opinion. 
But Mendenhall answered, — 

“Yes, if we had only ourselves and your parents 
287 


MANDERS 


to deal with. Unfortunately, there is a community 
of gossips to consider.” 

“Well, what could they say?” 

“ What could they not say ? They would have 
the right to say what they pleased. And there 
would be only one way to stop their tongues.” 

“Yes?” 

“ You would have to marry me. Agree to become 
my wife, and — ” 

He had reached out his arms to take her, but she 
sprang aside with such a merry burst of laughter 
that he felt a momentary anger. He was not in 
a frame of mind to be mocked. 

“And do you think,” she asked, enjoying his vexa- 
tion, “that I would agree to marry a man to save 
appearances ? Give myself away because, otherwise, 
a lot of people, for whom I don’t care a snap of my 
fingers, might clack their scandalous tongues ? No, 
I thank you ! You needn’t fall into any notions of 
knight-errantry on my account, my dear Mr Menden- 
hall. As long as I know myself worthy of peoples’ 
respect it doesn’t make a particle of difference to me 
into what errors of judgment they may tumble. I 
care very little what people think. It isn’t worth 


while.” 


“If you think that way, there is all the more 
reason why I should take care to protect you against 
your own indifference.” 

“You have been reading Don Quixote without 
understanding it,” she said, smiling at him. 





MANDERS 


Mendenhall said no more on the subject, but when 
the moon had pencilled off his course shoreward 
across the now gently undulating waters of the bay, 
he threw off his coat and waistcoat and began un- 
lacing his boots. 

“ Are you really going to do it ? ” she asked. 

“ Of course I am,” he answered. 

“ Luckily I am not heavily dressed,” she said. 

“ What do you mean ? ” 

“ I am going with you.” 

The idea was refreshingly comical to him. It put 
him in high humour. His spleen went out in a guffaw. 

“ So you are mermaid, then, among other things ! 
Perhaps you are Undine herself ! That explains your 
oddity ! A mile and a half of water is a mere prom- 
enade to you. Or do you count on riding a dolphin ? 
They say they are slippery, sharp-spined beasts — how 
do you find them ? ” 

“ I am quite at home in the water, and I shouldn’t 
be surprised if I could swim as well and as far as you 
can. But I don’t intend to swim, and I haven’t got 
a dolphin ; but if you go I am going with you — we 
are going to end our adventure together.” 

“ How are you to manage it ? Is your parasol a 
fairy wand ? ” Mendenhall was pleased with the tone 
of sarcasm he got into the speech. 

Florence was complacently matter-of-fact. 

“ There is a square piece of timber by the side of 
the house. It is big enough to support us in the 
water as we swim, or to rest us when we are tired. 

T 


MANDERS 


You are to do up the things we don’t wear in your 
coat, and tie the bundle on .to the log. If necessary, 
the log would hold me too ” 

“ Ridiculous ! ” exclaimed Mendenhall, finding her 
serious. “ The thing: is not to be thought of.” 

“ It has been thought of, and that is what we shall 
do — unless we stay on the island.” 

Mendenhall protested, reasoned and ridiculed in 
vain; and from having regarded the scheme as an 
alternative, Florence came to urge it as a positive 
necessity, with the final result that Mendenhall got 
the timber down into the water while she was getting 
herself in readiness for the exploit. 

When everything was in readiness and Florence 
was on the point of wading into the shallows, 
Mendenhall caught her by the hand. 

“ Stop ! It is a foolish and dangerous undertak- 
ing. You were right in the first place. We’ll wait 
here until morning.” 

“I like danger, and I like folly,” Florence an- 
swered. “ I’m in the vein, and I’m going. You can 
come or stay as you please.” She broke from him, 
plunging into the water and giving the log a shove 
as she did so. 

Mendenhall followed. He admired her pluck. Men 
who are themselves brave admire courageous women, 
and he wished, now that they were really launched 
into the adventure, that the sea were a little rougher, 
the element of danger a little greater ; he thought he 
should like to see her battle. 


290 


MANDERS 


Cf Are you cold ? ” he asked, after they had been 
swimming some time. 

“ It was chilly at first ; but I’m warm now.” 

“ It will take us about an hour. Are you good for 
it ? ” 

“ Oh, yes, I think so. It’s jolly.” 

“ You swim well.” 

“ It is my chief accomplishment.” 

“ One of them. You have many chief accomplish- 
ments.” 

“ Most of them tabooed.” 

“ Not by the elect. Shall we rest ? ” 

“ If you are tired.” She climbed half-way on to 
the log, and he swam to the opposite side, holding on 
by his left arm. 

“ Florence.” 

“ Yes?” 

“ You know that I love you.” 

“ Shall we swim on ? ” 

She slipped back into the water. He had thought 
her singularly beautiful as she sat in the clear moon- 
light, the wet garments that clung about her glisten- 
ing with the movements of her body, and her action 
disappointed him. 

“ Won’t you listen to me ? You are not indifferent 
to me, are you ? ” 

“ I think so.” 

“ I won’t believe it ! You once cared for me.” 

“ I was beginning to. But that is past. We 
needn’t talk of it.” 


291 


MANDERS 


“We must talk of it. If you ever cared for me 
you care for me now. I love you, and I want your 
love in return.” 

“ You had your chance and you threw it away. If 
you had fought it out with me that time in Rome, 
perhaps I might have given in to you. But you ran 
away.” 

“ You sent me away ! ” 

“ The man I should think it worth while to marry 
could not be sent away.” 

“ But I have come back ! ” 

“ Too late. You did not think me worth the win- 
ning at the right time. That is the one thing a 
woman can’t forgive.” 

He swam around to come beside her. 

“ You shall not send me away again. You shall 
be mine in spite of yourself. I love you. I love you. 
No one else shall have you.” 

He grasped the log and put his free arm about 
her. 

“Let me go!” 

“ Promise to be my wife ! ” 

“ Let me go ! ” 

“ Not until you have promised me ! ” 

She released her hold on the log and thrust against 
it, struggling to free herself from him. But he held 
her firmly. 

“ You are mad,” she cried. 

“Yes, with love for you. I care for nothing but 
you. You are my world, my life! If I lost you 
292 


MANDERS 


once, I shall not lose yon again. You have laughed 
at me, despised me ! You shall not laugh at or 
despise me again ! You are mine ! I mean to have 
you!” 

“Do you think this is the way to make me love 
you ? ” renewing her vain struggle to free herself. 
“You are a brute! a coward!” 

“ Yes, both, since I am strong enough to hold you, 
and since I am afraid to live without you.” 

“ What do you mean ? ” looking for the first time 
into his face, and startled by what she saw there. 

“ You know what I mean,” he answered. 

She looked at him fixedly, ceasing to struggle 
against him. 

“ You would do that ? ” she asked, a curious eager- 
ness in her voice. 

“ I would do that,” he said determinedly. 

“ You think you can frighten me ! ” 

“ I do not wish to frighten you. If we go ashore 
it shall be as affianced lovers.” 

She laughed. 

“ And you would trust a promise got in that way ? ” 

“ I can trust you.” 

“ And you would take an enforced wife ? ” 

“You love me.” 

“ I shall not give you the promise.” 

“No?” 

“No.” 

He let go his hold on the log, clasping her tightly 
in his arms and pressing his lips to hers passionately 
293 


MANDERS 


as they sank into the water. But Florence did not 
struggle. Instead, she clasped her arms about his 
neck responsively, it seemed to him, and fearlessly, 
her lips still held against his own. He was uncertain 
of this for a moment, and the waters above his head 
seemed to beat his thoughts into disorder, but under- 
standing came to him with a rush of overwhelming 
emotion and he released his clasp from her, making a 
joyous sweep of his arms, forcing his way upward 
unmindful of the burden clinging so closely to his 
neck. 

He swam for the log, drawing her with him, and 
clutched at it, holding to its edge, while with the 
other arm he lifted her so that her head came clear 
of the water. She drew a deep breath and looked 
up into his face with a smile. 

“ You are a strange wooer,” she said. 


294 


CHAPTER XXII 


Manders was unwilling to leave Marie this morning. 
Something seemed to keep him, as he confessed to 
her when she warned him playfully that he was 
wasting time. 

“ Every time I start for the door it is the same as 
if someone said, 4 Wait a while, Manders,’ and I can’t 
go out. You are sure you are feeling all right ? ” 

“ You foolish boy ! don’t you see how well I am ? 
Don’t you see how much better I am ? Doctor Besnard 
is a wonderful man, almost as wonderful a man as 
you are, dearie ; and between you I am getting ever 
so well.” 

Manders had learned the trick of smiling with the 
lips without taking counsel of his heart, and he 
looked brightly into Marie’s face ; but something 
wrenched more fiercely than usual within his breast, 
and the lips paled as they smiled. The remarkable 
clearness and transparency of her face and throat 
made him think of those exquisite lilies of the Easter, 
which are so delicate your thumb and finger pressed 
upon a petal bruise it to perishing. And in her 
cheeks he saw the thumb and finger pinch of an 
2 9 $ 


MANDERS 


invisible cruel hand, and it seemed to him so much 
more vividly distinct this morning. 

Marie, bending over her work, had only noted the 
smile, and she drew comfort from it, for she had come 
to regard every firm, cheery word of the doctor’s and 
every sunny look of Manders as evidence that her 
improvement was not a delusion of her own imagina- 
tion merely. To strengthen her self-confidence Doctor 
Besnard encouraged her industry with the needle, 
and Miss Warley had given her hints in embroidery, 
so that Marie had come to think herself rather an 
artistic as well as expert needlewoman. Pride in 
what had become really high-class work gave her 
the energy to its accomplishment, and the good 
doctor declared more than once to Miss Warley, — 

“ It beats all my experience ; but the work she 
is doing is her medicine. I suppose it is because 
it keeps her mind active in a useful employment. I 
must experiment along that line. Keep her busy; 
there is no danger of her overdoing.” 

So Marie had the habit of early rising to begin 
her work in the freshness of the warm sunshine, 
and though she rested many, many times in the 
course of the day, it surprised them all what 
quantities of sewing she managed to do in a week’s 
time. 

It was not altogether in jest, then, that she said 
to Manders this morning, — 

“Now, you must not stand around to make me 
talk to you, for that hinders my work, Away with 
296 


MANDERS 


you. And, Manders, I sha’n’t scold if you bring me 
an orange when you come.” 

But when he had gone down into the street he 
lingered about the doorway, undecided and reluctant. 
He went as far as the corner and returned, thinking 
he would better go up to Marie again, but could find 
no excuse. Then he remembered what she had said 
about an orange. He would take one up to her 
now. He ran to the epicerie two turnings along the 
street. The grocer’s wife was in charge. 

“ How much for your best oranges, madame ? ” 

“Four sous each, mon joli gargon. How many 
will you have ? ” 

“ One — six. But I shall pay you for them this 
evening; I have not made my money yet.” 

“ Ha ! ha ! one would say you had dealings at 
the Bourse ! Eh ! well ; there are your oranges, 
and if you sing in front of my door this evening, 
I shall not mind the odd four sous.” 

“ Thank you, madame ; but I never get less than 
ten sous for a song,” said Manders, taking his bag of 
oranges, and throwing her a pleasantly impudent 
glance. 

“ Ha ! ha ! the little droll ! You might own Paris 
at that rate one of these days.” 

As Manders approached his number, he saw a cab 
stop before the entrance and a man get out. The 
figure was too familiar to him to permit of an 
instant’s doubt or mistake, and Manders stopped 

still as he recognised Blakemore. 

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MANDERS 


His face paled and flushed by turns, and his heart 
beat violently as he recalled the words Marie had 
babbled and moaned in her sleep as he knelt by 
her bedside. One thing she had said which pierced 
him through, and for that he hated this man for 
whom his mother had called so piteously. 

Blakemore had paid his fare and entered the 
house before Manders could get possession of him- 
self. Blakemore was going rapidly up the third 
flight when Manders overtook him. 

“ Wait ! ” Manders called in a low voice. 

“ Is it you, Manders ? ” Blakemore asked, stopping 
and looking into the semi-darkness behind him. 

“Yes. You must let me go first. You mustn’t 
come until I tell you.” 

He spoke authoritatively, going by without greet- 
ing Blakemore and running swiftly up the stairs to 
the door, where he stopped, panting for breath, but 
entered the room before Blakemore could come up 
to him, singing as he entered, as he always did on 
coming home to Marie. 

“ Why have you come back so soon ? ” Marie 
asked chidingly yet gratefully, too, he was so 
precious to her eyes. 

“ I bring you oranges ! ” 

“ So many ! I only dreamed of one. This is 
wicked extravagance. You must take the others 
back.” 

“ On the contrary, you must eat them all. They 
are magic oranges. They are not two-sou affairs 
298 


MANDERS 


such as Mere Pugens brings to you once in a while. 
Look at that one, now ! Do you know what will 
happen when you eat it, if you put the seeds in a 
circle and make a wish for something — no, that 
isn’t right — oh, yes, you must make a wish to see 
someone — that is it — and if there are as many 
seeds as there are letters in the name, you will 
see the person that very day. Miss Warley told me 
all about it.” 

“ How wonderful ! ” said Marie, smiling. 

“ You mustn’t laugh ; it’s true. Let’s try it now. 
It won’t take two minutes. And who will you 
think of ? Who would you like to see ? Captain 
Warley? He hasn’t been here in a long time. 
But, then, he is too old to be interesting, isn’t he? 
So is M. Monier. You used to have a lot of friends 
you don’t see any more. Isn’t there one of them 
you can think of?” 

Marie was amused by the way he rattled on, 
with an air of mock gravity and taking the 
seeds from her, as if each one were big with 
destiny. 

“ You are to find out from the orange seeds who 
it is I’m going to see.” 

There was one seed more than he wanted, and he 
rid himself of it secretly, arranging and rearranging 
the others in a perplexed way, trying a variety of 
names, finally, as if by an inspiration, crying out 
with the energy of triumph, — 

“ Blakemore ! That name fits ! You are -going 
299 


MANDERS 


to see Monsieur Blakemore! What an odd thing 
that would be ! He’ll have to cross the ocean/’ 

He professed to think he was having rare fun at 
his game, pretending not to see the convulsive way 
in which Marie’s hand was pressed against her side, 
or the sudden flush that came into her face; and 
he went on with his chatter until he saw her com- 
posure returning. Then suddenly looking up at her, 
his face smiling, he exclaimed, — 

“ If you really want to see him, you shall ! Shall 
I get him ? You don’t believe I can ? You’ll see ! ” 
and before she realised what was passing, Blakemore 
had entered the room. 

He had advanced to within a few steps of her 
before he saw her clearly, and he stopped short as 
if a powerful blow had been struck in his face. 
This woman, rising so unsteadily to her feet, with 
half-outstretched arms, a mysterious smile of tremu- 
lous hope on the thin lips and shining through 
the transparent face, this was not Marie? 

In the same instant a realisation of the other’s 
thoughts came to each of them. The smile and the 
joy vanished from Marie’s face, a shiver seemed to 
pass over her, her arms drooped down to her sides, 
and she would have fallen, but that Blakemore, a 
pitiful tenderness swelling in his breast, sprang 
forward with his arms outheld to receive her. 

Manders stole out into the hall, closing the door 
behind him, and crouched down in the angle of the 
staircase where it was darkest, his face between his 
300 


MANDERS 


knees and his hands clasped at the back of his head. 
He was holding himself down in a struggle. Jacob 
wrestled through the night no more desperately 
against the force that opposed him than Manders 
wrestled with his temptation in the dark corner of 
the stairs. The agony of loss and desolation had 
pierced him in the tone of Marie’s voice when she 
cried out at the sight of Blakemore. The cry came 
back to him, articulate, intelligible, addressing itself 
directly to him. “ I don’t need you any more, 
Manders ! ” it was saying to him. “ I don’t need 
your love, your care, your protection any more. 
My heart has come back to me ! I can get well 
now ! ” His soul was bruised with the sound of 
it, and his thoughts were bitter with the bitterness 
of jealousy and death, not good fruits of the infant 
mind. This jealousy was more than the passion of 
supplanted love; it was the anguish of superseded 
devotion. The very essence and life of his happi- 
ness was the fact that he was Marie’s champion, 
defender, provider, that she had become dependent 
upon him, and that he was equal to the obligation. 
The idol of his love was the helpless object of his 
care, and the rapture of his song was the pride of 
his faith. If he were no longer needed for this 
service, if she no longer looked to him as her prop 
and stay, what need for him at all ? She had 
needed him until Blakemore came ; she would need 
him again if Blakemore — Why had he come ? 
What right had he to come? Why should he be 


MANDERS 


here now? A dull memory of his own words to 
Miss Warley came as an answer to him. “ Tell him 
my maman wants him.” Yes; Blakemore had not 
come unbidden. That much was clear. But there 
was no reason for his staying. “ He must not stay ! 
He sha’n’t stay ! ” And the cry seemed to say to 
him anew, “ My heart has come back to me ! I can 
get well now ! ” Over and over the words repeated 
themselves, “ I can get well now ; I can get well 
now ! ” until Manders began to use them as a 
weapon for his own defence, beating down with 
them the spirit of violence striving to master him. 
The victory came at last, came with a flood of tears 
and a convulsion of sobs that seemed to rack his 
very being, but which, subsiding, permitted him to 
see his angel of Peniel. 

Presently there was the sound of footsteps ascend- 
ing the stairs. It was Doctor Besnard coming for his 
regular semi-weekly visit. Manders dried his eyes, 
but drew closer into the angle, holding his breath 
as the doctor passed. Though he had mastered 
himself, he was unwilling that any friendly eye 
should see the signs of the struggle. He watched 
the doctor enter as Blakemore held open the door, 
and it puzzled him that Doctor Besnard seemed in 
nowise surprised to be greeted by this stranger. It 
did not come within the range of his knowledge 
that an experienced physician allows nothing to 
surprise him, and therefore he concluded that Doctor 
Besnard knew all about Blakemore, and was pre- 
302 


MANDERS 


pared for his appearance. When the door closed he 
felt shut out. For the first time in his life he 
caught a sympathetic sense of what it means to be 
alone in the world. He had thought of others 
being alone, and had been sorry for them, looking 
especially with a curious pity upon the school pro- 
cession of coarsely-uniformed children who were 
named orphans; but he had never had the thing 
brought home to him along the way of kindred 
emotions until now, and it terrified him. He thought 
he must run to beat at the door, calling out that he 
was there ; but he remembered that there was no 
need of that — the door would open to his touch, 
and there w T ere kisses and love and friendliness 
beyond it ready for his taking. No ; there was 
no need of anything from him but to go down 
the stairs and into the streets to the beginning of 
his labours. There was still the need of being, of 
holding life in a firm grip, fearlessly. If Marie no 
longer required his services, he still had duties to 
perform, and chief of these was to do the best 
that was in him to do. He had need of himself! 

As he walked along, going in the direction of the 
river, his thoughts buffeted helpless to and fro be- 
tween mysteries he was just beginning to discern, it 
occurred to him to tell Mere Pugens of Blakemore’s 
arrival. He did not choose that she should find it 
out for herself ; he did not choose to have her think 
that Marie had anything to do with the coming. His 
reasons were not well-defined, but he was sure of his 
3°3 


MANDERS 


conclusions, and he went at once to the shop. Happily 
Mere Pugens was occupied with a patron for whom 
she was weighing out some tobacco. He took advan- 
tage of the situation to call to her from the door, — 

“ Monsieur Blakemore has come ! I sent for him ! 
Maman didn’t know ! ” 

He was off before Mere Pugens had fully grasped 
what he was saying. Having told this woman because 
he thought in that way to shield Marie from the 
effects of surprise in the garrulous and too inquisitive 
dame, Manders felt that it would be a sort of treason 
not to tell Miss Warley. He recollected, too, that 
to-morrow was lesson day, and Miss Warley would 
come expecting him to play and sing. It was neces- 
sary, therefore, to let her know in time that there 
were to be no more lessons ; not for the present at 
least — certainly not in the rooms in the Rue St 
Jacques where Blakemore was likely to come. 

“And is he to take her away ? ” Miss Warley asked 
when Manders had finished. 

“Take her away!” he cried, becoming rigid and 
looking fiercely at Miss Warley. “No!” Then in- 
terpreting the surprise of her eyes, he fell into a 
tremble, looked down, fumbling with his cap, and 
saying, in such a humbled way that she put her hand 
tenderly upon his head, “ I don’t know. They haven’t 
talked to me. I came away because — because I have 
my work to do. What makes you think he is going 
to take her away ? ” 

“Because I think it would be good for her. Come; 
304 


MANDERS 


it is not a thing to make you unhappy — you would 
go with them. She wouldn’t go away and leave 
you.” 

“Yes; she is going away to leave me. i know 
that well enough. I have known that a long time — 
but I didn’t think anyone could take her from me — 
anyone but God.” 

“ No one but God can take her from you, dear. 
Come ; you are not fit for your work to-day. Don’t 
go. Stay with me, and after a while I’ll go with you 
to see your maman and Mr Blakemore. You can’t 
sing to-day.” 

“I don’t have to be happy to sing. I sing best 
when it pains here,” pressing his clenched hand 
against his breast. “They’ll pay me well for my 
songs to-day.” 

Blakemore thought as Miss Warley thought, and 
about the time she was talking on the subject with 
Manders he was asking Doctor Besnard as to the 
advisability of taking Marie away. He had followed 
the doctor to the door. 

“ Don’t you think a change of scene would be bene- 
ficial?” 

“ Oh ! changes help for a little while sometimes, — 
as long as they tonic the mind. I should not expect 
much from it in this case. You are better than a 
change of scene. I’m going to speak frankly to you. 
Madame Manders, who was a woman of exceptional 
constitution, would never have fallen a victim to this 
disease if she had not been pining — that is the right 
u 


MANDERS 


word, Monsieur Blakemore — if she had not been 
pining for a love that was for some reason denied 
her.” 

“ Refused by her, doctor.” 

“ I do not quarrel with terms. I had some idea of 
the kind from the first, and in spite of her reticence 
I gathered enough from subsequent conversations 
with her to confirm my opinion. When I entered 
her room half an hour ago and observed the way she 
looked at you the case was perfectly clear to me. If 
you had come six months ago I should not have had 
to tell you as I tell you now — you have come too 
late.” 

“ I did not know. Can nothing be done ? ” 

“Nothing. The only question is as to how long 
you personally — by your presence, by your manner, 
by your devotion, can avert the inevitable. The mind 
prolongs life, and I am not so sure that it couldn’t 
save life if we only knew how to use it, and used it 
in time.” 

“I was thinking of going by boat to the south 
coast ? ” 

“A delightful trip — but wait a few days.” The 
doctor spoke kindly, not encouragingly. “ You see 
her stronger than she really is. She is sustained 
by an extraordinary excitement to-day. Wait until 
I can judge how far the reaction is likely to take 
her.” 

“ Why should there be any reaction ? Why do you 
expect it ? ” 

306 


MANDERS 


“ Because we doctors don’t know any better.” 

The door of the inner room opened and Marie 
appeared, leaning against the frame as she said 
smilingly, — 

“ I am afraid you two are talking behind my back. 
I tried to hear you but couldn’t. It isn’t polite of 
you to leave me alone while you gossip about I don’t 
know what.” 

“ You are right,’’ said the doctor, cheerily ; “we 
were conspiring against you. We were planning a 
river excursion all the way to the Mediterranean by 
boat. How would you like that ? ” 

“ Charming, doctor ! But, alas ! you are always 
talking to me of doing things I can’t afford.” 

“ Well, be a good girl for a week and maybe one 
of the saints will drop a purse in your lap. Here, 
don’t go back in there to lie down. Put a shawl 
around you and sit out on the balcony. There isn’t 
any better sunshine than that this side of Kingdom 
Come, and it’s criminal to waste it. Keep her out in it, 
Monsieur Blakemore, as long as it lasts. I must be off. 
I can’t waste all my time here with you, my girl, for 
I have people who are really sick to look after. Good- 
bye. I’ve got to make a call up this way to-morrow 
morning. Maybe I’ll have time to drop in here for a 
moment, but don’t expect me.” 

“ What a humbug you are, doctor ! ” 

He had fairly carried her into the tiny balcony in 
front of the two long porte-windows of the back 
room, the windows opening on to it at a level with 
307 


MANDERS 


the floor. He wrapped her up lightly and, jesting 
that she only clung to this affectation of sickness 
because she liked his attentions, shook a finger at her 
rebukingly, and left her to Blakemore. 

There was not room for two chairs on the balcony, 
and Blakemore sat just behind Marie and within the 
room. 

“ That makes it easy for you to use me as a cushion,” 
he said, inducing her to lean against him. 

“ It seems to me that we have sat this way before, 
and that you said just those same words to me. Indeed, 
all the time since you came, everything has been like 
a repetition of something said or done in the same 
way before. Don’t you think it very queer ? I mean 
the way one’s fancies play tricks with one ? ” 

“You know some people believe that we are not 
having new experiences in this life but are only 
living over old ones.” 

“You and I are not silly enough to believe that, 
are we ? But tell me why you came back to Paris ? ” 

“To be with you.” 

“ That is what you said a while ago, and I didn’t 
scold you because it pleased me. I let myself think 
for a little time that you really had come back to be 
with me. But I am asking you seriously now. Have 
you come to work ? Have you done great work since 
I saw you ? And the picture — did you ever finish it ? 
I am foolish to ask so many questions. I don’t know 
how it is, but you seem to answer them as fast as I 
ask them, or else they answer themselves. My mind 
308 


MANDERS 


behaves strangely when I haven’t got my sewing. I 
think you’d better hand it to me from the table in the 
other room, I haven’t taken a stitch since you came. 
You must not make an idler of me.” 

“ I should like to see you idling on the seashore ! 
I want you to be well enough to start by the end of 
the week. We’ll have a jolly trip down the river in 
a boat of our own — you and Manders, and Miss Warley, 
perhaps, and I. And when we come to the sea — ” 

She interrupted him with a purring sort of laugh. 

“ You remind me of the way my father told fairy 
stories when I was a little girl. He was always 
sending ships to sea, and I used to sail away in them 
to wonderful countries. Our fairy tales never come 
true, do they ? ” 

“ But this is not a fairy story — it is going to be sure 
enough.” 

She smiled, looking into the blue distances and 
shaking her head. 

“ No ; I’m never going away from these little 
rooms. I’ve only been waiting for you, Walter, 
Now that you have come, there is but one thing more 
to wait for — just the one thing, Walter.” 

There was a stir among the leaves of a tree that 
hung over the roof of a low house opposite them, and 
he drew the wrap closer about her throat, holding it 
in place. 

“ You are not to talk in that way. All that is past. 
We are to be happy together ; I’ll have to scold you 
in my turn, if you don’t keep that in mind.” 

' 309 


MANDERS 


She put up her hand to stroke his cheek and press 
his head against her own. 

“ Yes, we are to be happy together — but here where 
I knew you first. They wanted me to go away long 
ago, but I would not. I never told them why, but they 
seemed to understand that it was best to let me have 
my way. It was best, too. I could not have waited 
for you so long anywhere else.” 

“But you will go with me! We can be so much 
happier if you will do as I wish ! It is so much 
pleasanter away from the cities at this time of the 
year ! You would like to see Marseilles again ? ” 
“For me there is no place pleasanter than this. I 
am content. I am happy. There is only one thing 
to make me sorrowful now — but I have wept all my 
tears away over it — my boy, my poor Edward, my 
Handers — what is to become of him ? ” 

“He will be cared for, Marie — you yourself will 
care for him, and then — and then he shall come 
to me.” 

“ Ah ! Walter, you are good ! Love my boy ! I 
know he is to be something in the world, but a little 
child cannot fight his way alone. And he will miss 
me so. It is worth while dying if you will take my 
place. You cannot help but love him. I haven’t 
failed of my duty altogether if I leave him such a 
friend as you. What a foolish thing my life has 
been. I wonder why God plays with us ? ” 

“ Marie ! We are not going to talk any more in this 
way. I have a multitude of things to tell you — ” 

310 


MANDERS 


“ Yes — tell me first about Miss Storey. I 
thought you would be married by this time. When 
is it to be ? ” 

“ It is not to be, Marie.” 

“Not to be? Why?” 

“ Because she has found out that I am not the kind 
of man that she can love.” 

“ Not the kind of man ! Ha ! you are jesting with 
me!” She put up her hand and gave his cheek a 
reproving pinch. 

“ No ; she was right, Marie. I am too easily swayed 
by circumstances to suit a woman who demands that 
her husband be the master of his own destiny, a 
governor of forces.” 

“ But you are an artist — an artist with something 
of the poet in him ! What is greater than a great 
artist ? She doesn’t love you, then ? * 

“No.” 

“ Poor Walter ! They say the heart wears out that 
loves without having love in return.” 

“ Let me console myself in loving you, Marie ! ” 
He put his arms about her. 

“ You pity me,” she said, closing her eyes, her lips 
quivering as she spoke. 

“ No, I pity myself. My chance of happiness came 
and dwelt with me and I turned aside from it, not 
knowing. I am being punished through you, Marie, 
who should have been my inspiration and my reward. 
It was such a love as yours that I needed to make my 
life complete,” 

311 


MANDERS 


She made no reply, and her arm slipped from the 
support of the chair and hung down, limp and motion- 
less. She was as still as if life had left her ; but there 
was a faint, sweet smile on her lips and the lashes of 
her eyes were wet with tears. Her face was turned a 
little toward him, her head resting against his arm on 
the top of the chair. He regarded her for some time 
in silence, marvelling at the serene and noble beauty 
of the white, thin face. It was not the face he had 
painted. He looked at the chin ; the dimple was no 
longer there. He bent to kiss the spot where it had 
been. 


CHAPTER XXIII 

Nothing further was said about going away. “ There 
is nothing to gain by going,” Doctor Besnard said to 
Blakemore, with a shake of the head the next day, 
and the headshake conveyed more than the words 
declared. Besides, had Marie been readier for the 
excursion proposed, there really was no reason for 
wishing to quit Paris just now. The city had put 
on more than its customary charm of autumnal 
beauty and softness, and the air of the mornings 
and afternoons and evenings was like a caress. No 
place could be better tempered to the delicate needs 
of an invalid, and Marie — one of those misguided 
creatures who imagine that absence from Paris is 
exile — thought no scene could be so lovely or so 
delight-giving. In her opinion, a drive in the Bois 
far exceeded in lively interest and wholesome bene- 
fit any possible driftings by river or rockings by sea, 
for her nature was exclusively terrestrial. So there 
were drives in the Bois, Marie being carried up 
and down the stairs, to and from the carriage, in the 
arms of Blakemore, a portage which had an agree- 
ably perilous excitement for her. Usually Miss 
Warley went with them, and sometimes the captain 
313 


MANDERS 


lent his amiable presence to the party; but neither 
Marie nor Blakemore noticed that Manders managed 
not to be about when neither of the Warleys were 
to go for the drive, though Marie unconsciously 
missed something of value from the benefits of the 
outings when Manders was not in his favoured place 
on the box with the coachman. Nor did anyone 
notice as the drives were gradually discontinued and 
finally given up altogether, that dark lines were 
coming under the boy’s eyes, and that there was a 
drawing down at the corners of the mouth, such as 
suffering makes in faces below which beat resisting 
hearts. These signs seemed to vanish mysteriously 
under Marie’s eyes, and she comforted herself with 
saying, “ He doesn’t know ; ” but he might have told 
her of clairvoyant nights and of visions by day had 
he not come to know that some prophecies are sacred 
alone to the mind that shapes them. Shutting these 
experiences — for they were realities to him — within 
the silences of his own thought had matured his 
faculties to such an extent that there was little 
more of the child left in him than the anxiously 
adoring love of Marie that had always filled his 
heart. He was readier than she would have be- 
lieved for the hour when he should no longer have 
to look into her face with a smile while he fought 
down the wish to clasp his arms about her neck 
and pour out his agony in tears. 

When the drives were abandoned, and Marie con- 
tented herself with the recreation of sitting on the 
314 


MANDERS 


balcony, or lying near the open window while Blake- 
more read from one of the few books she cared for, 
Manders got into the way of keeping to the streets 
of the neighbourhood, returning to the house at in- 
tervals to climb the stairs and listen at the door, or 
peer in if there seemed to be too great a silence. 
Expectancy of an invisible coming makes the heart 
afraid. Manders feared not to be there when the 
Comer arrived. Yesterday, however, he had crossed 
the river to the boulevards, and though a marvellous 
chance had come to him, terror seized him and fled 
with him to his home only to mock him with the 
tranquillity he found there. But the memory of 
that terror kept him at home to-day ; and then, too, 
he had something to tell Marie. 

“ Can you believe,” he said, smiling to her when 
they were alone, “ that I forgot you for a little time 
yesterday ? ” 

“ No, I won’t believe it ; but tell me about it.” 

“Did you ever feel yourself pulled along, as if 
you had to go where you didn’t want to ? ” 

“Yes; everybody feels that way sometimes.” 

“ I do often, and I always let it pull me, because I 
sometimes think it’s God. It might be, don’t you 
think ? ” 

“ Who knows ? ” 

“ Well, yesterday it was that way, and I went on 
until I found myself at the Madeleine as the people 
were coming out from a mass. I thought what a 
fine crowd to sing for and I began singing. But 
3i5 


MANDERS 


they didn’t stop to listen — not many. I only got 
twelve sous out of all that crowd. Then, do you 
know what I thought? I thought God didn’t pull 
me that time ! ” 

“Ah, people coming out of church are not the 
people to sing to,” said Marie, with playful serious- 
ness. 

“I found that out and started up the boulevard. 
When I came to the Grand Hotel, I stopped under 
the arch and looked into the court. There were a 
good many ladies and gentlemen sitting about, and I 
just felt as if I must go in and sing to them. I was 
never in there before, but I went in and walked up 
to the wide steps that go all the way across one side. 
You know, don’t you? Well, I put one foot on the 
bottom step, took off my cap, and before anybody 
knew what I was about I began singing. Right 
away a man with a uniform on came towards me 
waving his hand for me to go away, and calling to 
me to stop. But a lady with white hair — I shouldn’t 
be surprised if she is a queen somewhere — held 
up her hand and said, ‘No, no, let him sing; he is 
a pretty child and has a sweet voice,’ and others 
said so, too, and the man didn’t drive me away, and 
I sang, and they gave me silver pieces, more than 
I’ve ever earned before.” 

“That was beautiful,” Marie said, a loving hand 
on his head, a happy light in her eyes. 

“ But that was not the best of it ! ” exclaimed 
Manders, struggling to repress the excitement that 
316 


MANDERS 


was getting the better of his dignity. “They were 
very nice to me, to be sure, but it was when I was 
going away that the big thing happened ! ” 

“ Something happened 1 ” 

“ I should say so ! A gentleman followed me out, 
and on the street he said he would like to talk with 
me ; so I went into the cafd on the corner with him. 
He asked me all kinds of questions about myself, 
about you, about my singing, and if I could read and 
write — and then — and then — what do you think he 
said ? Oh ! you needn’t squeeze your brows together ! 
You could never guess. I’m going to tell you. He 
said he wanted me for a children’s opera company 
that he was going to have in the United States, and 
he said — are you listening ? — that he would give me 
one hundred francs a week and take care of me ! ” 

There was an expression on Marie’s face that 
turned all his triumph into despair, and he cried 
out, — 

“ But I told him I wouldn’t leave you for all the 
money in the world.” 

“No, dear,” she said, smiling now, “you would 
never leave me; I wasn’t afraid of that. I was 
thinking that this may be a friend God has sent 
to you just when you may need a friend. And 
you don’t know who he is.” 

“Yes, he gave me his card.” 

“ Keep it, little one. Who knows what may come 
of it. Monsieur Walter perhaps can tell you if this 
is a worthy man.” 

3i7 


MANDERS 


Manders took one of his mother’s hands, stroking 
it in a way that always indicated to her his em- 
barrassed but negative state of mind. 

“If you please, maman,” he said, “I don’t want 
M. Walters to know about it — not yet — not till I 
tell him myself.” 

“What a man you are getting to be! Eh, well! 
manage your own affairs ! I shall not tell him, 
monsieur ! But you might be condescending enough 
to kiss me for keeping your secret.” 

She seemed so proud of him, was so elated by the 
incident of the “ manager ” — for that was the distinc- 
tive word on the card — and entered so heartily into 
fancies and predictions of what his future should be, 
that Manders rose into such a glow of spirit as he 
had not known in months, and Miss Warley thought 
them very much too animated when she came in for 
the afternoon, it being one of her half-holidays. 

“ Never mind,” Marie said in reply to Miss Warley ’s 
chidings, “ you mustn’t blame Manders, and there is 
no use scolding me, you know. As for taking a 
nap, Walter is coming to read to me presently; that 
always puts me to sleep, he reads so well.” 

When Blakemore came, Manders, his apprehensions 
calmed by the joyous hour with Marie, felt privileged 
to make a short tour in the quarter of the Luxem- 
bourg. “I don’t have to earn much; I’m rich to- 
day ; I won’t be long away,” he laughed to Miss 
Warley as he went out the door. 

“Shall I go on with ‘The Idyls of the King?’” 


MANDERS 


Blakemore asked, reaching down the Tennyson from 
the tiny shelf at the right of the window. 

“ Yes, I suppose so, only — ” 

“ Only what ? ” 

“ I wonder if you two will laugh at me ! But I’ve 
been thinking that I’d like to hear you read some- 
thing out of the Bible ? Would you ? looking at 
him wistfully yet diffidently. 

“ Why not ? It is one of the best reading books in 
the world. Where is your Bible ? ” 

“ In my room, under the pillow. Will you get it, 
Miss Warley ? I’ve been reading it a little to myself 
every day, I don’t know why ; I never used to care 
for it. I’m so glad you don’t laugh at me, Walter.” 

“ Laugh at you, Marie ! I believe in the Bible.” 

“ Ah,” she sighed in a satisfied way, “ then read to 
me the ninth chapter of Acts. That seems to me most 
wonderful — Paul so strangely converted and able to 
raise the dead to life.” 

When he had done reading she asked, “ Don’t you 
think we, too, could heal the sick, and bring the dead 
to life again, if we really believed in Christ and His 
teachings ? ” 

He looked at her curiously, smiling, but making 
no answer. He wondered if there were any real 
believers in Christ and the Word, if the Christian 
religion were anything more in these days than a 
carefully-guarded scabbard for the sword of political 
power. Marie thought the smile was at the expense 
of her credulity. 

319 


MANDERS 


“ I suppose I am foolish,” she admitted. “ Read me 
something else.” 

He turned here and there in the book, reading 
chapters chosen at random until he saw that she 
slept, lying easily in the invalid’s chair, stretched 
before the open window. He sat watching her for 
sometime, and Miss Warley brought a light wrap 
to lay across her shoulders. 

“I think she has been too excited to-day,” she 
whispered. “ I hope she will have a good, restful sleep.” 

Blakemore put down the book and rose saying, — 

“Yes. I’ll go down and finish some letters. I’ll 
come back at six o’clock, though if she should wake 
and want me, I’ll be ready at any time. Would you 
call me ? I’m on the first floor, left, you know.” 

That she might not disturb Marie, Miss Warley 
took her chair and embroidery into the other room 
when Blakemore had gone. After an hour she looked 
in upon Marie, who was still in that serene sleep, and in 
the same posture as before, save that one arm was now 
curved above her head. Miss Warley smiled and resumed 
her work. Another hour and there was the sound of 
careful footsteps ascending the oak stairs. Manders was 
coming. Miss Warley went quickly to the door, and 
opened it softly as Manders stepped upon the landing. 

“ Sh ! ” she said, putting her finger on her lips, and 
as he tiptoed in, she added, “ She is sleeping beauti- 
fully, and has been for the last two hours.” 

“ That is good for her, is it not ? ” said Manders. 

“Very good. She doesn’t often have such un- 
320 


MANDERS 


broken sleep for so long a time, I know right well. 
Now that you have come, I think I’ll go. Mr Blake- 
more is coming at six. What time does the woman 
come ? ” 

“ At seven.” 

“ And stays until morning ? ” 

“Yes, she gets coffee for us.” 

“ I’ll come in at noon to-morrow. Can I do any- 
thing for you before I go ? ” 

“No, I thank you.” 

“You look tired.” 

“But I am not. I’ll sit here, where I can watch 
her through the doorway, and wait till she wakes. 
I’ve something to tell her, something to amuse her. 
I wish you could be here.” 

“ Don’t wake her up with wanting to amuse her,” 
shaking a warning finger at him as she whispered. 

“ I sha’n’t wake her,” he whispered. 

“ Good-bye.” 

He closed the door behind her, and came to take up 
his post of watching just where through the doorway 
he could look into Marie’s face, the smile on which he 
could just distinguish in the shadow thrown by her 
arm curved above her head. He thought as he 
watched how still and calm she slept ; he was hardly 
sure whether there was any motion of the light 
covering above her breast as she breathed, and he 
seemed to be trying to breathe as gently himself, as 
if a sigh too rude might break the peaceful spell that 
sleep had laid lovingly upon her. 

X 


MANDERS 


Blakemore looked up from his writing to the clock 
on his mantelpiece, and found that it was a quarter 
of an hour after the time he had told Miss Warley he 
would return. He arose at once and started up the 
stairs. As he came near to Marie’s door, he heard 
Manders singing, a weirdness in his voice that made 
it almost strange, and he stopped to listen, doubting 
if he had rightly located the sound. He had not been 
mistaken, and he recognised the song, the quaint, sad- 
tuned trifle Manders used to love so much to have Marie 
sing while he stood weeping by her side. He remem- 
bered the words, and could follow the singing though 
the words were hardly distinguishable — 

“ If the light should go and the roses fade, 

And earth grow cold and the birds not sing, 

My heart should not be the least afraid, 

For love of you makes eternal spring ! 

But should we miss love, you and I, 

Though death were life, my soul would die.” 

He opened the door and went quickly into the 
inner room. Manders was on his knees beside Marie, 
his arms clasped about her, holding her close to his 
breast, rocking to and fro with her as he sang, his 
cheek pressed against hers, his eyes shut and tear- 
less. Marie’s arms hung limply down; she gave no 
response to his caresses. Hearing someone enter, he 
stopped his song and opened his eyes, and seeing 
Blakemore, said slowly, as he still rocked to and fro, 
cradling the dreamless sleeper, — 

“ She is mine now — mine ! Don’t touch her !** 


322 


CHAPTER XXIV 


“Where is Manders?” Captain Warley asked when 
they were ready to come away from that walled-in 
city in which Marie is waiting for the new day. 

The four of them, Manders, Blakemore and the 
Warleys, had gone in the same carriage, and now that 
the mission was ended, the others suddenly missed the 
desolated object of their common sympathies. The 
man looked about anxiously, but Miss Warley, better 
understanding the boy than the others could, said 
presently, — 

“ Let us not try to find him. He can take care of 
himself.” 

“ Yes,” said the captain, “ Matilda is right. He is 
an odd little chap. We wouldn’t know how to com- 
fort him.” Then a little while later, as they drove 
along, he asked feelingly, “ What is to become of the 
boy ? ” 

“ If he will come with me,” said Blakemore, “ I will 
do with him as if he were my own.” 

“A generous purpose, Mr Blakemore. There is 
nothing else that he can do. I’m sure he will be 
glad to go with you. But hasn’t he any relatives ? ” 
3 2 3 


MANDERS 


u His father had some brothers in England, but I 
believe he has nothing to hope for from them.” 

“ Hasn’t he any rights ? ” 

"I think not” 

“ Well, it doesn’t matter if he has such a man as 
you to look out for him. Besides, it isn’t such a hard 
fate for a boy with the right sort of stuff in him to 
have to take hold of the world for himself. I think 
* expectations ’ have been the ruin of more lads than 
have ever been benefited by them. Almost every 
man who has been worth a pinch of salt in the 
affairs of the world has had to battle his way up 
single-handed from most unfavourable beginnings. 
It takes fighting to bring the best qualities into 
development, to give force to character. I am the 
bankrupt of a prodigal youth myself. My father did 
me the incalculable injury of leaving me twenty 
thousand pounds, without having taught me how to 
spend it. Luckily, I had sense enough to use the 
dregs to buy a small commission in the army, and I 
was able to patch together the shreds of manhood 
well enough to make a fairly decent showing as a 
soldier. The devil ! if it were not for the asylum 
the army offers them thousands of decent young 
men would go bag and baggage to the dogs in Eng- 
land, because we have made it rather a discreditable, 
if not dishonourable, thing for a gentleman to be 
self-supporting through his own industry. That is 
where you Americans are a generation or two ahead 
of us. You are civilised enough to appreciate the 
324 


MANDERS 


dignity of labour. Give the boy a chance, Mr 
Blakemore, but prepare him to be self-reliant and 
independent. Make him understand that he has 
got to hew out his own path. Do you know, sir, 
that the thing for which I most honour the Prince of 
Wales is the fact that he knows how to make a pair 
of shoes ? That is something he can do for himself ; 
he had nothing to do with being born heir to a 
throne ! Teach Manders to make shoes, horseshoes 
if necessary, but don’t cram a silver spoon down his 
throat to choke him to death.” 

Blakemore saw nothing more of Manders that 
day, but the following morning there was a knock 
at his door, and in answer to his “ Entrez ,” Manders 
came in. 

“ I want to talk with you,” he said. 

“ And I with you, Manders,” Blakemore said kindly, 
holding out his hand. 

Manders, who stood just inside the door, made no 
responsive movement, though his face was unclouded, 
and his eyes looked frankly, calmly toward Blake- 
more. 

“ You and I should be the best of friends, Manders. 
I am your friend with all my heart. Why are you 
not mine ? What has changed you ? You used to be 
fond of me. Why are you not now ? ” 

Standing as he was, and with no change of the 
placid expression that seemed so unnatural to Blake- 
more, Manders said, without a tremor of feeling, — 

“One night my maman said things in her sleep 
325 


MANDERS 


that no one else but you should have ever heard. 
Should I shake hands with you ? ” 

Blakemore felt his own go down under the gaze of 
the boy’s clear eyes. He had risen and gone toward 
Manders, but he returned to his desk and sat down. 

“ When you are older, Manders, you will know that 
we sometimes do the things that we would give our 
lives to have undone again. Well, lad ? ” 

“ I want to know how much you have paid out in 
these weeks ? ” 

If Manders had crossed over and struck his fist 
into Blakemore’s face, the effect upon the man would 
not have been different from that produced by these 
words. 

“ Manders, my boy,” looking with steady reproach 
at him, but speaking with gentleness, “don’t forget 
that I too was loved!” 

There was a momentary loosening of the boy’s lips 
and a quivering of the eyelids, and then the calm 
again. He had thought of all this. He had con- 
sidered everything. He was prepared for just this 
reminder. 

“ That is why I sent for you,” he said. “ But that 
is over now. There is nothing for you to do for her. 
I have everything to do for her. I must live my life 
for her. I hated you when you came ; I don’t hate 
you now. Shall I tell you why ? Mere Pugens has 
talked to me. She told me what my papa was and 
how he died. It’s an awful thing to die that way. 
And Mere Pugens told me other things so that I 
326 


MANDERS 


might understand ; but I don’t understand all ; I 
only know that I have got to live so that my 
maman need not be ashamed. She must not blame 
herself for me. I must begin in the right way. 
How much have you paid out ? And Mere Pugens 
says that you must have paid Miss Warley, too. 
How much is it all?” 

“I do not know; I have no account.” 

“You are a man; men always know these things; 
tell me.” 

Blakemore felt himself at a question of honour 
with this boy in whom there was so little boyish- 
ness. He could not trifle with him; he could not 
humble a dignity that did not need years to make 
it admirable. He figured with his pencil for a 
minute or so, and gravely handed Manders a slip 
of paper on which the approximate total was 
given. 

“Those figures will cover everything,” he said. 
“And now let us talk a little of your future, 
Manders. I want to help you.” 

“I cannot stop now. I have to be on the other 
side of the river at noon. Good-bye, M. Blake- 
more.” 

“This afternoon or to-morrow morning, then,” 
Blakemore said, as Manders opened the door. 

“ Good-bye, M. Blakemore,” Manders repeated, going 
out aud shutting the door behind him. 

The next morning Blakemore found this letter 
thrust under his door, the envelope unaddressed: — 
327 


MANDERS 


“ M, Blakemore, — This will Tell you that i oh you 
1,800 francs and That I Will pay you. i dont no 
when but I know i will, i shall send It to you as 
fast as i urn it. i Am going awa, and not see you 
ani more. I have taking all my things in the little 
trunk that is mine and som things that are maman’s. 
i leave all the rest of the rooms as they are. if there 
is ani thing in them you want it is yours, i Have 
taking maman’s pillow tho. the piano is Miss Warleys. 
the concierge has got the key. i dont Hate you ani 
more, i think Im sorry for you. Good Bye. 

“Edouard Manders.” 


THE END 


328 


It may come as a pleasant surprise to many of 
our readers to learn that the young American who 
made so great an impression as Siegfried at Covent 
Garden on Tuesday night is only adoptively an 
American. Mr Edward Manders, though a native 
of Paris, is really an Englishman, his father having 
been a member of the well-known Devonshire family, 
of which Mr Mark Manders, M.P., is now the honoured 
and distinguished head. This, however, is his first 
visit to England. Young Manders is said to have 
made a professional beginning at the age of eight 
years, when he sang as a principal in one of the 
juvenile opera companies with which the Americans 
amused themselves for several seasons eighteen or 
twenty years ago. After that experience, he suffered 
the vicissitudes that unprotected youth must under- 
go in the battle for existence, but he may feel an 
excusable pride in the fact that he made his own 
way to success, though he was not without friends 
who were willing to aid him. We believe Lady 
Kentmoor was one of these early friends whose 
gracious offers were declined in a perhaps laudable 
spirit of independence. Last evening Mr Manders, 
who will be heard for the second time as Siegfried 
to-morrow night, occupied a seat in the box with 
Lord and Lady Kentmoor and their lovely daughter 
the Lady Florence . — Extract from the St James’s 
Gazette. 


y 




























SELECTIONS FROM 


E C. PAGE AND COMPANY r \S 
LIST OF FICTION 



Selections from 

L. C. page and Company's 


Cist of fiction 



An Enemy to the King. ( Twentieth Thousand .) 

From the Recently Discovered Memoirs of the 
Sieur de la Tournoire. By Robert Neilson Ste- 
phens. Illustrated by H. De M. Young. 


i vol., lib. i2mo, cloth 


$1.25 


“ Brilliant as a play ; it is equally brilliant as a romantic novel.” — Philadelphia 
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“ Those who love chivalry, fighting, and intrigue will find it, and of good quality, in 
this book.” — New York Critic. 


The Continental Dragoon. ( Sixteenth Thousand.) 

A Romance of Philipse Manor 1 House, in 1778. 
By Robert Neilson Stephens, author of “ An En- 
emy to the King.” Illustrated by H. C. Edwards. 
1 vol., lib. i2mo, cloth .... $1.50 


“ It has the sterling qualities of strong dramatic writing, and ranks among the 
most spirited and ably written historical romances of the season. An impulsive appre- 
ciation of a soldier who is a soldier, a man who is a man, a hero who is a hero, is 
one of the most captivating of Mr. Stephens’s charms of manner and style.” — Boston 
Herald. 


The Road to Paris. (Sixth Thousand .) 

By Robert Neilson Stephens, author of “An 
Enemy to the King,” “The Continental Dragoon,” 
etc. Illustrated by H. C. Edwards. 


1 vol., lib. i2mo, cloth 


$1.50 


“Vivid and picturesque in style, well conceived and full of action, the novel is 
absorbing from cover to cover.” — Philadelphia Public Ledger. 

“In the line of historical romance, few books of the season will equal Robert 
Neilson Stephens’s < T>**' ” — Cincinnati Times- Star. 


LIST OF FICTION. 


3 

A Gentleman Player. 

His Adventures on a Secret Mission for Queen 
Elizabeth. By Robert Neilson Stephens, author 
of “An Enemy to the King,” “The Continental 
Dragoon,” “The Road to Paris.,” etc. Illustrated by 
Frank T. Merrill. 

i vol., lib. i2mo, cloth, 450 pages $1.50 

“ A Gentleman Player ” is a romance of the Elizabethan period. 
It relates the story of a young gentleman who, in the reign of Eliza- 
beth, falls so low in his fortune that he joins Shakespeare’s company 
of players, and becomes a friend and protege of the great poet. 
Throughout the course of his adventures the hero makes use of his 
art as an actor and his skill as a swordsman, and the denouement of 
the plot is brought about by means of a performance by Shakespeare’s 
company of a play in an inn yard. 


Rose a Charlitte. ( Eighth Thousand .) 

An Acadien Romance. By Marshall Saunders, 
author of “Beautiful Joe,” etc. Illustrated by H. De 
M. Young. 

1 vol., lib. i2mo, cloth $1.50 

** A very fine novel we unhesitatingly pronounce it . . . one of the books that 
stamp themselves at once upon the imagination and remain imbedded in the memory 
long after the covers are closed.” — Literary World, Boston. 


Deficient Saints. 

A Tale of Maine. By Marshall Saunders, author 
of “Rose k Charlitte,” “Beautiful Joe,” etc. Illus- 
trated by Frank T. Merrill. 

1 vol., lib. i2mo, cloth, 400 pages $1.50 

In this story Marshall Saunders follows closely the fortunes of a 
French family whose history is bound up with that of the old Pine- 
tree State. These French people become less and less French until, 
at last, they are Americans, intensely loyal to their State and their 
country. Although “Deficient Saints” is by no means a historical 
novel, frequent references are made to the early romantic history of 
Maine. 


4 


L. C. PAGE AND COMPANY’S 


Her Sailor. (In Press.) 

A Novel. By Marshall Saunders, author of 
“ Rose k Charlitte,” “ Beautiful Joe,” etc. Illustrated, 
i vol., lib. i2mo, cloth, 250 pages $1.25 

A story of modern life of great charm and pathos, dealing with 
the love affairs of a Canadian girl and a naval officer. 


Midst the Wild Carpathians. 

By Maurus Jokai, author of “ Black Diamonds,” 
“The Lion of Janina,” etc. Authorized translation 
by R. Nisbet Bain. Illustrated by J. W. Kennedy. 

1 vol., lib. i2mo, cloth $1.25 

“The story is absorbingly interesting and displays all the virility of Jokai’s 
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climax to another.” — Chicago Evening Post. 


Pretty Michal. 

A Romance of Hungary. By Maurus Jokai, author 
of “Black Diamonds,” “The Green Book,” “Midst 
the Wild Carpathians,” etc. Authorized translation 
by R. Nisbet Bain. Illustrated with a photogravure 
frontispiece of the great Magyar writer. 

1 vol., lib. 1 2 mo, cloth decorative, 325 pages $1.50 

“ It is at once a spirited tale of * border chivalry,’ a charming love story full of 
genuine poetry, and a graphic picture of life in a country and at a period both equally 
new to English readers.” — Literary World . , London. 


In Kings’ Houses. 

A Romance of the Reign of Queen Anne. By 
Julia C. R. Dorr, author of “ A Cathedral Pilgrim- 
age,” etc. Illustrated by Frank T. Merrill. 

1 vol., lib. i2mo, cloth .... $1.50 

“ We close the book with a wish that the author may write more romance of the 
history of England which she knows so well.” — Bookman , New York. 

. “A fine strong story which is a relief to come upon. Related with charming 
simple art.” — Philadelphia Public Ledger. 


LIST OF FICTION, 


5 

Manders. 

A Tale of Paris. By Elwyn Barron. Illustrated, 
i vol., lib. i2mo, cloth, 350 pages . . $1.50 

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and a dash of dramatic force, combine to form an attractive story. The book contains 
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... It has grip, picturesqueness, and vivacity.” — The Speaker {London). 

“ A study of deep human interest, in which pathos and humor both play their parts. 
The descriptions of life in the Quartier Latin are distinguished for their freshness and 
liveliness.” — Si. James Gazette {London). 

“ A romance sweet as violets.” — Town Topics {New York). 


riy Lady’s Honor. {In Press.) 

A Romance. By Wilson Barrett, author of “ The 
Sign of the Cross,” etc., and Elwyn Barron, author 
of “ Manders.” Illustrated. 

1 vol., lib. i2mo, cloth, 350 pages . . $1.50 

A historical romance of great vigor and interest. The collabora- 
tion of Mr. Barrett with Mr. Barron, the successful author of “ Man- 
ders, ” is a sufficient guarantee of the production of a volume of 
fiction which will take very high rank. 


Omar the Tentmaker. 

A Romance of Old Persia. By Nathan Haskell 
Dole. Illustrated by F. T. Merrill. 

1 vol., lib. i2mo, cloth . . . . $1.50 

“ The story itself is beautiful and it is beautifully written. It possesses the true 
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which Omar is the hero.” — Troy Times. 

“ Mr. Dole has built a delightful romance.” — Chicago Chronicle. 

“ It is a strong and vividly written story, full of the life and spirit of romance.” — 
New Orleans Picayune. 

The Golden Do g. 

A Romance of Quebec. By William Kirby. New 
authorized edition. Illustrated by J. W. Kennedy. 

1 vol., lib. i2mo, cloth .... $1.25 

“ A powerful romance of love, intrigue, and adventure in the time of Louis XV. and 
Mme. de Pompadour, when the French colonies were making their great struggle to 
retain for an ungrateful court the fairest jewels in the colonial diadem of France.” — 
New York Herald. 


6 


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The Making of a Saint. 

By W. Somerset Maugham. Illustrated by Gil- 
bert James. 

i vol., lib. i2mo, cloth .... $1.50 

“ An exceedingly strong story of original motive and design. . . . The scenes are 
imbued with a spirit of frankness . . . and in addition there is a strong dramatic 
flavor.” — Philadelphia Press. 

“ A sprightly tale abounding in adventures, and redolent of the spirit of mediaeval 
Italy.” — Brooklyn Times. 

Friendship and Folly. 

A novel. By Maria Louise Pool, author of 
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1 vol., lib. i2mo, cloth .... $1.25 

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“The story will rank with the best previous work of this author.” — iTtdianapolis 
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The Knight of King’s Guard. 

A Romance of the Days of the Black Prince. By 
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1 vol., lib. i2mo, cloth, 300 pages . . $1.50 

An exceedingly well written romance, dealing with the romantic 
period chronicled so admirably by Froissart. The scene is laid at a 
border castle between England and Scotland, the city of London, and 
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Queen Philippa, the Black Prince, Bertrand du Guesclin, are all his- 
torical characters, accurate reproductions of which give life and vitality 
to the romance. The character of the hero is especially well drawn. 

The Rejuvenation of Hiss Semaphore. 

A farcical novel. By Hal Godfrey. Illustrated 
by Etheldred B. Barry. 

I vol., lib. i2mo, cloth .... $1.25 

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No more delightfully fresh and original book has appeared since ‘Vice Versa’ 
charmed an amused world. It is well written, drawn to the life, and full of the most 
enjoyable humor.” — Boston Beacon. 


LIST OF FICTION. 


7 


Cross Trails. 

By Victor Waite. Illustrated by J. W. Kennedy, 
i vol., lib. i2mo, cloth .... $1.50 

“ A Spanish-American novel of unusual interest, a brilliant, dashing, and stirring 
story, teeming with humanity and life. Mr. Waite is to be congratulated upon the 
strength with which he has drawn his characters.” — San Francisco Chronicle. 

“ Every page is enthralling.” — A cademy. 

“ Full of strength and reality.” — A tkenceum. 

“ The book is exceedingly powerful.” — Glasgow Herald. 


The Paths of the Prudent. 

By J. S. Fletcher, author of “When Charles I. 
was King,” “ Mistress Spitfire,” etc. Illustrated by 
J. W. Kennedy. 

1 vol., lib. i2mo, cloth, 300 pages . . $1.50 

“ The story has a curious fascination for the reader, and the theme and characters 
are handled with rare ability.” — Scotsman. 

“Dorinthia is charming. The story is told with great humor.” — Pall Mall 
Gazette. 

“ An excellently well told story, and the reader’s interest is perfectly sustained to 
the very end.” — Punch. 


Bijli the Dancer. 

By James Blythe Patton. Illustrated by Horace 
Van Rinth. 

1 vol., lib. i 2 mo, cloth .... $1.50 

“ A novel of Modem India. . . . The fortunes of the heroine, an Indian Nautch 
girl, are told with a vigor, pathos, and a wealth of poetic sympathy that makes the book 
admirable from first to last.” — Detroit Free Press. 

“ A remarkable book.” — Bookman. 

“ Powerful and fascinating.” — Pall Mall Gazette. 

“ A vivid picture of Indian life.” — Academy (London). 


Drives and Puts. Press ^ 

A Book of Golf Stories. By Walter Camp and 
Lillian Brooks. Illustrated. 

1 vol., lib. i 2 mo, cloth decorative . . $1.50 

Considering the great and growing interest in golf, — perhaps the 
king of sports, — this volume, written by Walter Camp, the eminent 
authority on sports, in collaboration with Lillian Brooks, the well- 
known writer of short stories, is sure to be a success. 


8 


L. C. PAGE AND COMPANY^ 


“To Arms!” 

Being Some Passages from the Early Life of Allan 
Oliphant, Chirurgeon, Written by Himself, and now 
Set Forth for the First Time. By Andrew Balfour. 
Illustrated by F. W. Glover. 

i vol., lib. i2mo, cloth .... $1.50 

“ A tale of ‘ Bonnie Tweedside,’ and St. Dynans and Auld Reekie, — a fair picture 
of the country under misrule and usurpation and all kinds of vicissitudes. Allan Oli- 
phant is a great hero.” — Chicago Times-Herald. 

“ A recital of thrilling interest, told with unflagging vigor.” — Globe. 
u An unusually excellent example of a semi-historic romance.” — World. 


The River of Pearls; or, The Red Spider. 

(In Press.) A Chinese Romance. By Rene de 
Pont-Jest, with sixty illustrations from original draw- 
ings by Felix R^gamey. 

1 vol., lib. i2mo, cloth, 300 pages . . $1.50 

Close acquaintance with the manners and customs of the Chinese 
has enabled the author to write a story which is instructive as well as 
interesting. The book, as a whole, shows the writer to be possessed 
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ters of the people of whom he is writing. The plot is cleverly com 
ceived and well worked out, and the story abounds with incidents of 
the most exciting and sensational character. Enjoyment of its perusal 
is increased by the powerful illustrations of Felix Regamey. 

The book may be read with profit by any one who wishes to real- 
ize the actual condition of native life in China. 


Frivolities. (In Press.) 

Especially Addressed to Those who are Tired of 
being Serious. By Richard Marsh, author of “ Tom 
Ossington’s Ghost,” etc. 

1 vol., lib. i2mo, cloth, 340 pages . . $1.50 

A dozen stories in an entirely new vein for Mr. Marsh. The humor 
is irresistible, and carries the reader on breathlessly from one laugh to 
another. The style, though appealing to a totally different side of 
complex human nature, is as strong and effective as the author’s 
intense and dramatic work in “ Tom Ossington’s Ghost,” 


LIST OF FICTION. 


9 


Via Lads. 

By Kassandra Vivaria. With portrait of the 


author. 

i vol., lib. i2mo, cloth 


$1.50 


“ ‘ Via Lucis’ is — we say it unhesitatingly — a striking and interesting production.” 

— London A theneeum. 

“ Without doubt the most notable novel of the summer is this strong story of Ital- 
ian life, so full of local color one can almost see the cool, shaded patios and the flame 
of the pomegranate blossom, and smell the perfume of the grapes growing on the hill- 
sides. It is a story of deep and passionate heart interests, of fierce loves and fiercer 
hates, of undisciplined natures that work out their own bitter destiny of woe. There 
has hardly been a finer piece of portraiture than that of the child Arduina, — the child 
of a sickly and unloved mother and a cruel and vindictive father, — a morbid, queer, 
lonely little creature, who is left to grow up without love or training of any kind.” — New 
Orleans Picayune. 


Laliy of the Brigade. 

A Romance of the Irish Brigade in France during 
the Time of Louis the Fourteenth. By L. McManus, 
author of “The Silk of the Kine,” “The Red Star,” 
etc. Illustrated. 

1 vol., lib. i2mo, cloth, 250 pages . . $1.25 


The scene of this romance is partly at the siege of Crimona (held 
by the troops of Louis XIV.) by the Austrian forces under Prince 
Eugene. During the siege the famous Irish Brigade renders valiant 
service, and the hero — a dashing young Irishman — is in the thick 
of the fighting. He is also able to give efficient service in unravelling 
a political intrigue, in which the love affairs of the hero and the 
heroine are interwoven. 


Sons of Adversity. 

A Romance of Queen Elizabeth’s Time. By L. 
Cope Cornford, author of “-Captain Jacobus,” etc. 
Illustrated by J. W. Kennedy. 



1 vol., lib. i2mo, cloth 


“ A tale of adventure on land and sea at the time when Protestant England and 
Catholic Spain were struggling for naval supremacy. Spanish conspiracies against 
the peace of good Queen Bess, a vivid description of the raise of the Spanish siege of 
Leyden by the combined Dutch and English forces, sea fight*, the recovery of stolen 
treasure, are all skilfully woven elements in a plot of unusual strength P — Pittsburg 
Bulletin. 


IO 


L. C. PAGE AND COMPANY’S 


The Archbishop’s Unguarded Moment. 

By Oscar Fay Adams. Illustrated, 
i vol., lib. i2mo, cloth decorative . . $1.25 

Mr. Adams is well known as a writer of short stories. As the title 
indicates, these stories deal with dignitaries of the Episcopal Church. 
The mingled pathos and humor, which Mr. Adams has handled so 
admirably in describing his characters, make a book of more tha* 
average interest for the reader of fiction. 


Captain Fracasse. 

Translated from the French of Gautier. By Ellen 
Murray Beam. Illustrated by Victor A. Searles. 

1 vol., lib. i2mo, cloth ...» $1.25 

“ The story is one of the best in romantic fiction, for upon it Gautier lavished his 
rare knowledge of the twelfth century.” — San Francisco Chronicle. 

“ One of those rare stories in which vitality is abundant.” — New York Herald. 


The Count of Nideck. 

From the French of Erckmann-Chatrian, translated 
and adapted by Ralph Browning Fiske. Illustrated 
by Victor A. Searles. 

1 vol., lib. i2mo, cloth .... $1.25 

“ ‘ The Count of Nideck,’ adapted from the French of Erckmann - Chatrian by 
Ralph Browning Fiske, is a most interesting tale, simply told, and moving with direct 
force to the end in view.” — Minneapolis Times. 

“ Rapid in movement, it abounds in dramatic incident, furnishes graphic descrip- 
tions of the locality and is enlivened with a very pretty love story.” — Troy Budget. 


Muriella ; or, Le Selve. 

By Ouida. Illustrated by M. B. Prendergast. 

1 vol., lib. i2mo, cloth .... $1.25 

“ Ouida’s literary style is almost perfect in ' Muriella.’ ” — Chicago Times-Herald. 
^ “‘Muriella’ is an admirable example of the author’s best work.” — Brooklyn 

“ It dwells in the memory, and bears the dramatic force, tragic interest, and skilful- 
ness of treatment that mark the work of Ouida when at her best.” — Pittsburg Bulletin , 


LIST OF FICTION. 


1 1 

Bobbie McDuff. 

By Clinton Ross, author of “The Scarlet Coat,” 
“ Zuleika, etc. Illustrated by B. West Clinedinst. 
i vol., large i6mo, cloth . . . . $1.00 

Bobbie McDuff,’ by Clinton Ross, is a healthy romance, tersely and vigorously 
told.” — Louisville Courier-Journal. ° 3 

“ It is full of mystery and as fascinating as a fairy tale.” — San Francisco Chronicle. 

“ It is a well-written story, full of surprises and abounding in vivid interest.” — The 
Congregationalist , Boston. 

The Shadow of a Crime. 

A Cumbrian Romance. By Hall Caine, author of 
“ The Manxman,” “ The Deemster,” etc., with twelve 
full-page illustrations in half-tone, from drawings by 
M. B. Prendergast. 

i vol., cloth, illustrated, gilt top . . . $1.25 


The Works of Gabriel d' Annunzio, 

The Triumph of Death. 

The Intruder. 

The flaidens of the Rocks. 

The Child of Pleasure. 

Each, 1 vol., lib. i2mo, cloth . . . $1.50 

“ The writer of the greatest promise to-day in Italy, and perhaps one of the most 
unique figures in contemporary literature, is Gabriel d’ Annunzio, the poet-novelist.” — 
The Bookman. 

“This book is realistic. Some say that it is brutally so. But the realism is that of 
Flaubert and not of Zola. There is no plain speaking for the sake of plain speaking. 
Every detail is justified in the fact that it illuminates either the motives or the actions 
of the man and woman who here stand revealed. It is deadly true. The author holds 
the mirror up to nature, and the reader, as he sees his own experiences duplicated in 
passage after passage, has something of the same sensation as all of us know on the 
first reading of George Meredith’s * Egoist.’ Reading these pages is like being out in 
the country on a dark night in a storm. Suddenly a flash of lightning comes and every 
detail of your surroundings is revealed.” — Review of the Triumph of Death , in the 
New York Evening Sun. 


12 L. C. PAGE AND COMPANY’S LIST OF FICTION. 


Mademoiselle de Beroy. 

A Story of Valley Forge. By Pauline Bradford 
Mackie. With five full-page photogravures from 
drawings by Frank T. Merrill. 

Printed on deckle-edged paper, with gilt top, and 
bound in cloth. 272 pages . . . $1.50 

“ The charm of * Mademoiselle de Berny ’ lies in its singular sweetness.” — 
Boston Herald. 

“ One of the very few choice American historical stories.” — Boston Transcript. 

“ Real romance . . . admirably written.” — Washington Post. 

“ A stirring romance, full of life and action from start to finish.” — Toledo Daily 
Blade. 

“ Of the many romances in which Washington is made to figure, this is one of the 
most fascinating, one of the best.” — Boston Courier. 

Ye Lyttle Salem Maide. 

A Story of Witchcraft. By Pauline Bradford 
Mackie, with four full-page photogravures from draw- 
ings by E. W. D. Hamilton. 

Printed on deckle-edged paper, with gilt top, and 
bound in cloth. 321 pages . . . $1.50 

A tale of the days of the reign of superstition in New England, 
and of a brave “ lyttle maide,” of Salem Town, whose faith and hope 
and unyielding adherence to her word of honor form the basis of a 
most attractive story. Several historical characters are introduced, 
including the Rev. Cotton Mather and Governor and Lady Phipps, 
and a very convincing picture is drawn of Puritan life during the latter 
part of the seventeenth century. An especial interest is added to the 
book by the illustrations, reproduced by the photogravure process 
from originals by E. W. D. Hamilton. 


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